Trump rally shooter described as ‘lonely’ and ‘sweet’ by those who knew him

Crooks, whom the Secret Service killed at the scene, hailed from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, just an hour-and-a-half drive from Butler, Pennsylvania, where the shooting took place. A 2022 high school graduate, Crooks’s bullets killed father and volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, put two others in critical condition, and grazed the ear of Trump.

“I will say he was definitely nerdy, for sure, but he never gave off that he was creepy,” one of his classmates, Mark Sigafoos, told CBS. “He seemed like he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Quiet and ridiculed

In high school, Crooks mostly kept to himself. Few of his classmates knew much about him, but they remembered a quiet, intelligent boy who was constantly bullied.

“He was somebody who came across as lonely a lot,” Jameson Myers told ABC. Myers had been in school with the shooter since elementary school.

A lover of history, Crooks excelled in his academics, even receiving the National Math & Science Initiative Star Awards in his graduation year. 

“One thing I did know for sure was he was very smart,” a student in his Advanced Placement statistics class told the outlet. “I always remember hearing his test grades when we would all compare, and he always did very well in math and sciences.”

“I would not say that he ever appeared as a threatening person,” the student continued. For him, Crooks was “never anything but kind.”

Most days, Crooks arrived at school dressed in camouflage and hunting outfits. Many also recalled how Crooks decided to wear a COVID-19 mask in the halls long after the schoolwide mandate had been lifted. According to students, he was often singled out and ridiculed for his clothing, shuffling through the school day as a pariah.

“He would sit alone at lunch,” said Jason Kohler, a classmate. “He was just the outcast.”

According to Kohler, Crooks was “bullied so much in high school” and almost universally perceived as a “loner.”

In interviews conducted by the Wall Street Journal, two students painted conflicting portraits of Crooks: one as an apolitical pacifist and the other as a looming, potential threat.

The first description came from Sarah D’Angelo, who explained how Crooks “never outwardly spoke out his political views or how much he hated Trump or anything.” Similarly, in a quote from CNN, D’Angelo described her classmate as “a quiet kid” who was “not obviously political or violent in any way.”

Juliana Grooms, on the other hand, remembered him quite differently. A year younger, Grooms told the Wall Street Journal how his passivity struck her as a cause for concern.

“If someone would say something to his face, he would just kind of stare at them,” she said. “People would say he was the student who would shoot up high school.”

Fond of firearms

During his freshman year of high school, Crooks attempted to join the varsity rifle team. After his first pre-season practice session, he was asked not to return.

“He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because of how bad of a shot he was,” Myers said. “It was considered, like, dangerous.”

Despite being shunned by the school’s rifle team, Crooks became a member of a local shooting club, the “Clairton Sportsmen’s Club.” With a 200-yard rifle range as one of its amenities, the club confirmed his membership to multiple outlets, denouncing his attack.

“Obviously, the Club fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred yesterday,” Robert S. Bootay III, the club’s attorney, told ABC. “The club also offers its sincerest condolences to the Comperatore family and extends prayers to all of those injured, including the former president.”

During Saturday’s attack, Crooks was reportedly wearing a gray T-shirt associated with the “Demolition Ranch” YouTube channel. The channel, known for its videos of firearms with titles such as “Is the AK-50 any good?” and “I sawed off a .50 caliber sniper rifle,” released a video on Monday aimed at denouncing senseless violence.

“The sweetest guy”

Just a couple of months prior to the shooting, Crooks graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County with an associate degree in engineering science.

After that, he was employed at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, working as a dietary aide. Crooks spent his shifts preparing and serving meals to the sick and elderly and, according to facilities manager Marcie Grimes, he had passed a background check and “performed his job without concern.”

One of Crooks’s colleagues at the nursing home was utterly shocked by the news, saying that he was the “sweetest guy.” He told CNN that, just last week, the two of them had assisted “sick old ladies” in opening packets of salad dressing during a meal.

“He was a really, really good person that did a really bad thing,” the colleague said. “I just wish I knew why.”

Life in Bethel Park

Bethel Park, a homespun Pittsburgh suburb of about 30,000, proudly boasts its median household income of $102,177 and a per capita income just over 1.3 times higher than the rest of Pennsylvania. Dan Grzybek, a county county member, described the Crooks’ little neighborhood to the New York Times as “pretty firmly middle class, maybe upper middle class.” For him, its streets and homes were nothing out of the ordinary, an “incredibly safe” and “close knit” portrait of Rust Belt suburbia.

Both his father, a registered Libertarian, and his mother, a registered Democrat, are licensed professional counselors. Crooks, a registered Republican, was also reportedly a donor to the left-leaning Progressive Turnout Project, giving $15 on President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day when he was just 17.

The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-15-style, semiautomatic rifle legally purchased by Crooks’s father. On the day of Trump’s attempted assassination, Crooks purchased around 50 rounds of ammunition from a local gun store, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Crooks’s father believed his son had simply gone to the gun range, only growing worried when he failed to respond to any messages.

Situated less than 450 feet away from Trump’s podium on the Butler Farm Show Grounds, Crooks was able to fire multiple shots into the crowd before being neutralized by countersnipers. In addition to the rifle, the FBI also found three explosive devices, two in his car and one in his house, that have been described as “rudimentary.”

Amid initial investigations, the FBI has stated that Crooks had no previous instances of mental illness and a very minimal social media presence, with only an account on Discord that had not been active for months. In 2022, a video crew for Blackrock, the multinational investment company, filmed a commercial during an economics class at Bethel Park High. In one of Crooks’s few video appearances, the commercial shows him in the front row wearing a dark hoodie, his head intently turned toward the whiteboard.

The search for a motive

Special agent Kevin Rojeck, the official in charge of the FBI investigation, stated that the bureau does not “currently have an identified motive, although [its] investigators are working tirelessly to attempt to identify what that motive was.” 

Looking at the shooting as an act of “potential domestic terrorism,” the FBI has gotten ahold of Crooks’s phone and is attempting to comb through its data in order to uncover a lead. 

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Rojek, in a statement, said that law enforcement does not currently believe Crooks had ties to any extremist groups, foreign or domestic, believing Crooks to have “acted alone and that there are currently no public safety concerns.”