Crooks attacked the former US president this Saturday during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving him slightly injured in his right ear. The young shooter was shot down by US intelligence agents seconds after firing around eight shots from a roof, at a distance of around 200 meters.
Crooks used a shotgun purchased by his father legally, according to sources involved in the investigation and cited by Spanish news agency EFE.
The attacker was detected by local authorities near the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) metal detectors placed at the entrance to the event, according to sources cited by CNN, who add that the police radioed that they would monitor him, having this information been transmitted to the Secret Service.
Crooks was also seen by people who alerted authorities that there was an armed person on a roof shortly before the shots were heard.
A resident of Bethel Park, a middle-class suburb in Pennsylvania, Crooks drove about 70 kilometers to reach Butler, where Trump’s last rally was held before the Republican convention that will make him the official presidential candidate.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, having won a $500 scholarship for his math and science skills. Some of the boy’s acquaintances say he was shy and was a victim of bullying. At school, he sat alone during breaks and at lunch.
Crooks was a member of the Republican Party and would vote for the first time in a presidential election on November 5th. Crooks’ father is a libertarian and his mother was a Democrat, according to information cited by the New York Times.
Meanwhile, the FBI opened a telephone line to obtain information, stating that, at the moment, the young man’s motivations are not known.
The attack resulted in the death of Crooks and a man who was sitting in the audience behind Donald Trump and who, at the time of the shooting, tried to protect his wife and daughter and was fatally hit by the bullets.
*With Lusa
