Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., who wounded ex-president Donald Trump and shot three other people, killing one and severely wounding two others, at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, was, like many Americans, a political enigma.
Crooks, according to FEC data, made a $15 donation to a progressive voter-turnout group on Jan. 20, 2021, the date of the inauguration of Joe Biden, but then registered as a Republican when he registered to vote eight days after his 18th birthday later that year.
His parents were equally split – his father, Matthew, a Libertarian, his mother, Elena, a Democrat.
“You’ve got a large spattering of different backgrounds and ideals, and definitely have a lot of mixed households in Bethel Park,” a neighbor, Dan Grzybek, told The New York Times.
Grzybek, who represents Bethel Park on the Allegheny County Council, briefly met and talked politics with the couple when he was running for re-election last year.
“Most people just can’t believe that this has happened in our neighborhood,” Grzybek said.
Matthew Crooks is a mental-health counselor, according to online records that list his home address in association with his counseling practice.
Thomas Crooks, a recent community college graduate who worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home, listed that same address on his voter-registration form.
The family’s 1,067-square-foot home, built in 1950 on a quarter-acre lot, has an estimated value of $249,000, so, modest.
The AR-15 that Thomas Crooks used in the shooting was purchased legally by his father, according to published and broadcast reports.
Guns seemed to be an overriding interest for Crooks, who, as he aimed his rifle at the ex-president, was wearing a T-shirt promoting a popular YouTube gun channel, Demolition Ranch, which boasts 11.6 million subscribers, 2.4 billion page views, and features, on its home page, a video titled “The Most POWERFUL Sniper Rifle vs. Solid Rock of Bronze!!!”
A former classmate at Bethel Park High School, where, according to a local online news report, Crooks had received a $500 “star award” from the National Math and Science Initiative when he graduated in 2022, told MSNBC that Crooks was a “loner” who was “bullied so much, like, so much,” saying the reason for the treatment was the way “he dressed, his appearance,” explaining that he regularly wore hunting gear to school.
Another former classmate told The New York Post that Crooks “was more of a loner. He probably had a friend group, but not many friends,” then added, “I would have pegged him as a Republican.”
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Chris Graham
