Trump rally shooter was registered Republican; Would have voted for first time in November
Washington (PTI): Thomas Matthew Crooks, the gunman who authorities say attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump was a 20-year-old registered Republican who would have voted for the first time in the presidential election in November.
He lived in the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park, about 56 km south of the Trump rally site where law enforcement officials said he fired at Trump, the presumptive presidential candidate of the Republican Party.
Crooks was shot dead by the Secret Service personnel on Saturday, soon after he fired a volley of shots at Trump from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue.”
He had previously made a small contribution to a Democratic-aligned group, CNN reported, quoting public records.
He graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, according to a local media report and a video of the school’s commencement.
Crooks was registered to vote as a Republican, according to a listing in Pennsylvania’s voter database that matched his name, age, and a Bethel Park address that law enforcement searched.
This year’s presidential election would have been the first he was old enough to vote in, CNN said. A US citizen who turned 18 years old on or before Election Day (November 5, 2024) is eligible to vote.
Federal Election Commission records show that a donor listed as Thomas Crooks with the same address gave USD 15 to a Democratic-aligned political action committee called the Progressive Turnout Project in January 2021.
When reached by CNN after the attack on Trump, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.
Crooks did not have any identification on his body, so agents had to “run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said at a press conference Saturday night before Crooks was named.
One attendee at the rally was killed and two others were critically injured, authorities said.
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UP: Misled by GPS navigation, car falls into river from partially constructed bridge, 3 dead
Bareilly (UP), Nov 24: Three people died when their car fell into the Ramganga river from a partially constructed bridge here on Sunday, police said, adding that they suspect the driver was misled by its navigation system into taking the unsafe route.
The accident occurred around 10 am on the Khalpur-Dataganj road when the victims were travelling from Bareilly to Dataganj in the Badaun district, they said.
"Earlier this year, floods had caused the front portion of the bridge to collapse into the river, but this change had not been updated in the system," Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam said.
The driver was using a navigation system and did not realise that the bridge was unsafe, driving the car off the damaged section, the police said.
There were no safety barriers or warning signs on the approach to the damaged bridge, leading to the fatal accident, Shivam said.
Upon receiving information, police teams from Faridpur, Bareilly and Dataganj police station rushed to the spot. They recovered the vehicle and the bodies from the river, Shivam added.
The circle officer said that bodies had been sent for post-mortem. Further investigation into the matter is underway.
— Bareilly Police (@bareillypolice) November 24, 2024
