Trump's Attacker Thomas M. Crooks Threatened to ‘Shoot Up’ And 'Bomb' School Bathrooms in 2019

Federal authorities have revealed several key details about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally on July 13. Initial reports revealed that Crooks was a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School. NewsX recently reported that five years back, Crooks also threatened to ‘shoot up’ the high school which led to many students staying home that day.

Federal agents interrogated a former classmate, Vincent Taormina, on Crooks' political inclinations and the threats he issued as a freshman. As reported by the Daily Mail, Taormina said, "We had like this anonymous place you could post things or tell on someone on our computers at school and he posted something like 'Don't come to school tomorrow,' and something else that made it sound like he'd put bombs in the cafeteria bathrooms. Half of us just didn't come to school the next day – I didn't. But it wasn't taken seriously." He added, "We all texted one another and it came out pretty quickly that it was Thomas and his friend group who'd made the threats to shoot [the school] up."

Taormina revealed that the investigators were especially interested about this incident. Crooks was just 15 at the time. Speculating on Crooks' motive for the recent shooting, Taormina believes that it was because of his desire for notoriety. He opined, "He [Crooks] was someone who flew under the radar, someone easily forgotten, people didn’t pay much attention to. Maybe part of his motive was just to solidify his name in the history books because really he was a nobody." 

FBI agents also visited Crook's home and spoke with his parents. Another friend of Crooks, shared, "I suspect the FBI has interrogated his parents very thoroughly to find out what if they knew anything about his state of mind. We are just struggling to understand what happened, it's so shocking. This is a community and for this to have happened within it…it's almost too much to process right now. It's going to take a long time." The insider added, "Honestly we knew him less and less the older he got."

Meanwhile, a criminologist proposed that the relentless teasing and social isolation might have played a role in his decision to open fire at the rally. Dr. John Cencich argued, “Thomas Crooks, the shooter in this case, has or has experienced major depression disorder. That fits quite in line with the pathway to violence on a threat assessment.” While Trump survived with a minor graze to his right ear, start bullets resulted in the death of a retired fire chief, Corey Comperatore, a father of two, and left two other attendees in critical condition.