The man who attempted to kill President Donald Trump, Thomas Matthew Crooks, threatened to “shoot up” his own high school five years before he targeted Trump, a detail that criminologists say may shed light on his motive for the assassination attempt.
The future killer’s warning was enough to keep dozens of Bethel Park High School students home for the day, but the incident was ignored by school officials at the time, his former classmates recalled.
“There was an anonymous place on the school computers where you could accuse someone or post something, and he was writing things like, ‘Don’t come to school tomorrow,’ or like he was putting a bomb in the cafeteria bathroom,” said Vincent Taormina, 20. He told the Daily Mail.
“The next day half the students didn’t come to school, including me. But no one took it seriously.”
“We were all texting each other and quickly discovered that Thomas and a group of his friends were threatening to shoot. [the school] Up.”
The threat, ignored at the time, is now the focus of the FBI’s investigation into Crooks, especially given the striking similarities between the plan and the attack he staged at a Trump rally over the weekend.
Crooks fired seven shots from the roof of a building in an apparent attempt to assassinate President Trump, but instead Trump killed a married father of two and severely injured two audience members, while President Trump only suffered a scratch on his ear.
Investigators later found an explosive device in Crooks’ car, which was parked not far from the venue where the rally took place.
Crooks was just 15 at the time he allegedly made the threats in 2019, but his photo was conspicuously missing from his high school yearbook that year.
During that time, the shooter was “relentlessly” bullied by his classmates, who called him a “lonely kid” and mockingly dubbed him the “school shooter.”
Timeline of the attempted assassination of President Trump
He was also banned from participating in extracurricular social clubs, including the school’s rifle team, classmates said.
One criminologist said the constant teasing and isolation may have influenced his decision to open fire at the Pennsylvania rally.
“The shooter in this case, Thomas Crooks, suffers from or has had severe depression, which is very consistent with a threat assessment pathway to violence,” said Dr. John Sencic, a criminologist and professor at Penn West University. He told WXPI.
“We know that his classmates report that he was bullied almost daily, sat alone and rarely said anything.
“The important thing is that he took the rifle team selection test and not only did he not pass, he was told not to come back. That must have been very devastating for him.”
Even though he’d been out of high school for two years and had been accepted to both the University of Pittsburgh and Robert Morris University for the fall semester, Crooks may have still harbored ill will toward his old bullies, Cencich said.
Crooks honed his shooting skills in the months before the attack and set his sights on a large target to impress his classmates — a move criminologists say makes him similar to John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster.
“This complaint is not directed at former President Donald Trump, it’s directed at his classmate. What did he do during that time? He joined a gun club to improve his shooting skills,” Sencic said.
Investigators are combing through Crooks’ cellphone and other devices for clues that could shed light on his motive, but so far have found nothing.
According to the FBI, the suspect investigated Trump’s movements before shooting him and also researched President Biden.
