Secret Service agents shot and killed Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man behind the assassination attempt on Trump, who was on a rooftop with a rifle near the former president’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to the FBI.
The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the man who allegedly shot former President Donald Trump. His hometown is about an hour’s drive from the rally Trump was addressing.
Secret Service agents then shot and killed Crooks, who was on the roof of a building just outside the rally site at a farm show in Butler, Pennsylvania, the agency said.
One participant was also killed and two spectators were seriously injured, authorities said. All were identified as men.
According to US media reports, Crooks was registered as a Republican in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, according to county voter records.
But U.S. federal campaign finance records also show that Crooks donated about $14 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal group that encourages Americans to vote.
According to USA Today, he has no criminal record in Pennsylvania.
A video posted on social media and geotagged by the Associated Press (AP) shows the body of a person wearing gray camouflage gear lying motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant located just north of the Butler Farm Show site where Trump’s rally was held.
Authorities said members of the U.S. Secret Service’s Counter-Assault Team killed the shooter. The heavily armed tactical team accompanies the president and major party candidates. It is tasked with dealing with any active threats while other agents focus on protecting and evacuating the person in the center of protection.
Law enforcement found an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a third person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
An analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows that the shooter was able to get surprisingly close to the podium where the former president was speaking.
The rooftop where the shooter was located was less than 150 yards from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent sniper could reasonably hit a man-sized target. For reference, 150 yards is the distance at which U.S. Army recruits must reach a scaled-down human figure to qualify with the M-16 rifle. The AR-15 rifle, which the Trump rally shooter was armed with, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military’s M-16 rifle.
Asked at the news conference whether law enforcement did not know the shooter was on the roof before he started shooting, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said “that’s what we believe at this point.”
“It is surprising that the shooter was able to open fire on the scene before being killed by the secret services,” he added.
The attack was the most serious assassination attempt on a president or presidential candidate since the assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and has drawn renewed attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized United States, less than four months before the presidential election.
