Washington — The gunman who fired shots at former President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was rejected from his high school’s rifle team, according to a former classmate.
The classmate, Jameson Myers, graduated in 2022 with the gunman, whom the FBI identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, age 20. Myers was a member of the Bethel Park High School varsity rifle team and said he and Crooks were close in elementary school, but not in high school.
Crooks tried out for the rifle team his freshman year, Myers said, but did not make the junior varsity roster. Myers said Crooks did not return to try out for the team for the rest of high school.
He called Crooks a “nice kid who never talked poorly of anyone and I never have thought him capable of anything I’ve seen him do in the last few days.”
“When I did speak with him, he just seemed like a normal boy who was not particularly popular but never got picked on or anything,” Myers said.
Crooks was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. According to law enforcement sources, he was armed with a semiautomatic rifle and suspicious devices were found in his vehicle. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper at the rally.
A law enforcement official said early Sunday that the Secret Service and the FBI are investigating the suspect’s background and speaking with his family. The FBI has secured his home and federal law enforcement is searching his family’s residence in suburban Pittsburgh, the law enforcement official said.
Trump said in a post to his social media platform that the upper part of his right ear was pierced by a bullet during the attack at his rally in Pennsylvania. He was checked at a local hospital before flying to New Jersey late Saturday night.
One audience member at the rally, Corey Comperatore, was killed in the shooting, and two other men are in critical condition, officials said.