Four days after Thomas Matthew Crooks carried out a shocking act of political violence, investigators and residents in his western Pennsylvania hometown remain baffled about his motives. The FBI has analyzed Crooks’s cellphone and has found nothing that explains why he climbed onto a roof and shot at former President Trump, grazing his ear. Crooks’s parents have spoken to law enforcement, but they also seemed to have little insight, telling authorities he didn’t appear to have any strong political leanings and had few, if any, friends, the Wall Street Journal reports. The attempted assassination looked likely to drive the country to new levels of partisan distrust and the picture of the gunman, a quiet loner who wasn’t politically outspoken, has instead left most of the public scratching its head.
The AR-15 rifle Crooks used was one of more than a dozen registered to and legally purchased by his father, with whom he often went to the shooting range, law-enforcement officials said. In Crooks’s sedan parked near the rally, authorities found two explosives and a ballistic carrier, or vest, with three, 30-round magazines in it, an indication that he might have wanted to cause greater carnage. He had hidden another bomb in his bedroom in his family’s home. The discoveries suggest Crooks had a plan, but early indications are that he kept it to himself. Crookso left a surprisingly limited record online. Three cyberintelligence analysts found little. A chess profile, an account for online coding classes and a few gaming accounts were some of the only leads they could uncover. None discovered public social-media postings, photos, or obvious ties to peer groups or organizations.
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