FBI probing motives, background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt

A defiant Donald Trump called for unity and resilience a day after surviving an attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania, while federal authorities worked feverishly Sunday to uncover more information about the background and motivations of the 20-year-old Allegheny County man named as the shooter.

The gunman, whom the FBI identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pa., opened fire Saturday evening from the rooftop of a building near the rally site at a fairgrounds in Butler, about an hour outside Pittsburgh, authorities said.

Trump had just taken the stage at what was scheduled to be his last planned public appearance before heading to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee when shots rang out just after 6:10 p.m. The former president was slightly wounded by a bullet that he later said pierced his right ear.

Crooks was killed by U.S. Secret Service agents, but not before firing off several more rounds that critically wounded two spectators and left another member of the audience dead.

Pennsylvania State Police on Sunday identified the man who died as Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief from Sarver, Pa. His family said he died attempting to shield his wife and daughters from the gunfire. Gov. Josh Shapiro called him “a hero.”

Meanwhile, state and local authorities continued their efforts to determine what motivated the harrowing act of political violence and how Crooks — a recent community college graduate who had not yet had the opportunity to vote in a presidential election — was able to elude security precautions and get so astonishingly close to the stage.

Agents fanned out across the region seeking to piece together a timeline of his movements in the moments before the shooting — the first such attack on a president or candidate for the office in more than four decades.

» READ MORE: Conspiracy theories spread wildly online after Trump shooting

Trump, in posts Sunday to his social media platform, Truth Social, thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers and said he was in “good spirits.” He vowed not to allow the attempt on his life to delay his plans to attend his party’s nominating convention in Wisconsin this week and arrived in Milwaukee Sunday evening.

“It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote, continuing: “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand united, and show our true character as Americans, remaining strong and determined, and not allowing evil to win.”

President Joe Biden said he spoke briefly with his campaign rival Saturday evening, had ordered an independent review of security at the rally, and directed the Secret Service to review its safety protocols for the Republican convention.

Later, in a prime-time televised address Sunday evening from the Oval Office, the president condemned the attempted assassination and called on the nation to “lower the temperature in our politics.”

“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America,” he said. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”

The shooting marked the most serious attempt to kill a president or presidential candidate since a gunman wounded then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981. It came as the deeply divided nation was locked in a contentious and polarizing campaign and amid concern over a growing threat of political violence.

In recent years, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) was bludgeoned in their San Francisco home and an assailant nearly killed House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.) during a 2017 shooting of the GOP congressional baseball team outside Washington. In 2022, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was allegedly targeted for assassination by a man who managed to get within feet of his Maryland home.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said agents have seen increasingly violent rhetoric online since the rally, along with people posing online as the dead shooter.

“We’re also focused on the continuing efforts — which were already substantial, given that they’re national security special events — to [secure the] conventions in Chicago, in Milwaukee,” he said.

Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.

He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.

His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.

» READ MORE: Why Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate Donald Trump is a mystery to investigators and his ex-classmates

Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.

Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.

Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.

“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.

Two other former students interviewed by The Inquirer portrayed Crooks as a quiet and engaged classmate with an interest in how government works.

Bethel High School graduate Mark Sigafoos described Crooks as “nerdy” but added: “I don’t think he was as harshly bullied as some people are saying.”

Former student Max R. Smith remembered Crooks as an intelligent classmate with conservative political leanings. Smith recalled participating in a mock debate in a course they took together, where their teacher posed questions on government policy and had students stand on opposite sides of the classroom to signal their support or opposition.

“The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other. ... It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate.”

» READ MORE: What we know about the deadly shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pa.

Chief among the concerns for officials investigating the site of the shooting was how Crooks gained access to the roof of the agricultural tool manufacturing plant from which he carried out the attack. Attendees had described long lines to get into the event, that included security checkpoints with bag checks, metal detectors, and hand wands.

Not long before shots rang out, rally-goers noticed a man climbing to the top of the building and warned authorities, Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe told the Associated Press. A local officer climbed a ladder to the roof to investigate, encountered Crooks, and was forced to retreat after the gunman pointed his rifle at him, Slupe said.

Asked at a news conference early Sunday whether law enforcement failed to provide adequate security for the rally, Kevin P. Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said at a news conference Sunday that authorities were still working to determine “what, if any, failures there were.”

“There’s going to be a long investigation into exactly what took place and how the individual was able to get access to the location,” Rojek said.

Investigators said Crooks was not carrying ID during the shooting, initially complicating their efforts to identify him after his death. They eventually used his weapon — an AR-15-style rifle, recovered at the scene — and DNA analysis to make the confirmation.

The multi-acre Butler Farm Show fairgrounds remained cordoned off by authorities Sunday afternoon, as a few dozen journalists and spectators lined the perimeter.

John Hudson, a former Secret Service agent of 11 years who said he served during the George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations, stood on the side of the road wearing a Trump 2024 hat. After watching videos from the scene and examining maps of the site, Hudson, 58, said he had to see the scene for himself.

He was dumbfounded as to how an armed man was able to get within a few hundred yards of Trump’s event. Sniper teams, he said, are typically trained to monitor distances up to 1,000 yards out.

”Why is a building 150 yards away not secured?” asked Hudson, who now runs a private security firm. “I can’t believe that building didn’t have an agent standing there or walking around it. A uniformed officer should have been there at the very least.”

» READ MORE: The Secret Service is investigating how a gunman who shot and injured Trump was able to get so close

While the investigation played out, family members grieved the attacks’ other victims and lawmakers from both sides of the political divide called for a de-escalation of the heated political rhetoric that has marked the presidential campaign playing out across a deeply divided nation.

Dawn Comperatore Schafer, sister of Corey Comperatore, the spectator Crooks was believed to have killed, described her brother in a Facebook post Sunday as a hero.

”The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we loved the most,” she wrote. “My baby brother ... had so much life left to experience. Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds.”

» READ MORE: Corey Comperatore identified as man killed in Trump rally shooting

Pennsylvania State Police identified the two surviving victims as David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pa., and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pa. Though both had been rushed to the hospital with critical injuries, they were listed in stable condition Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Gov. Shapiro said flags would fly at half staff across the state in honor of Comperatore and the other victims.

“We need to learn from our history in this commonwealth and this country,” Shapiro said during a news conference in Butler County. “We need to bring our better angels forward and carry that forward in this political season.”

» READ MORE: Gov. Josh Shapiro identifies man killed at Trump rally and denounces extreme political rhetoric

Meanwhile, preparations for the Republican National Convention, scheduled to begin in Milwaukee on Monday, continued undeterred, and authorities said they were confident in the security measures they’d put in place.

The FBI said it was not aware of any “specific and articulated threats” against the convention.

“During our extended planning efforts, we have accounted for various security scenarios that may arise, and we are confident in the plan we have implemented for the Republican National Convention,” the Secret Service’s RNC coordinator Audrey Gibson-Cicchino said at a news conference in Milwaukee. “We are confident in the security plans that are in place for this event, and we’re ready to go.”

Still, for the GOP delegates who descended on the city Sunday from across the nation, the attempt on the life of their party’s presumptive nominee was top of mind.

» READ MORE: GOP delegates from Pa. prepare to give Trump a ‘hero’s welcome’ in Milwaukee

“The hero’s welcome Thursday is gonna be a deafening event,” said Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist and elected delegate from the Harrisburg area attending his 13th Republican convention.

Jim Worthington, a longtime Trump ally from Bucks County, and the chairman of the delegation, will be the person to cast the state’s ballots for Trump.

”We’re all on board, we’re even more on board than we were before,” he said. ”The way the president left the stage last night — flew into Newark and got off the plane. ... I was told he may have even golfed today? Could you imagine?”

Earlier in the day, members of the roughly 100-member Pennsylvania delegation anxiously watched news reports while awaiting a flight to Wisconsin from Gate B6 at Philadelphia International Airport.

“We need to be unified as a nation and a people and move forward,” Pennsylvania GOP chair Lawrence Tabas said. “Violence has no place in a political democracy and we just need to come together as a people.”

Staff writers Nick Vadala, Katie Bernard, Gillian McGoldrick, Rob Tornoe, Anna Orso and the Associated Press contributed to this article.