Another piece to the puzzle of why Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday may have been revealed.
Kelly Little, a neighbor of the Crooks family in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, told a reporter with Pittsburgh’s WPIX that until recently there were pro-Trump signs up in the yard.
“There absolutely was MAGA supporting things for a while,” she said.
Crooks, 20, lived in the home with his parents Matthew and Mary Crooks.
This revelation — coupled with Fox News reporting Wednesday that Crooks’ parents were looking for him Saturday in the hours leading up to the rally shooting and eventually called authorities — may mean that they knew he could be a threat to Trump or his supporters at the event.
Perhaps they had taken down the yard signs to assuage the feelings of their son.
Him missing along with the father’s AR-15 raised a red flag for the parents.
As Fox News host Harris Faulkner noted, we don’t know the exact nature of their concern. Was it that he would do harm generally or specifically at the Trump event?
WHOA. Thomas Matthew Crooks’ parents CALLED law enforcement BEFORE the Trump assassination attempt to warn them that he was “missing” and they were “worried” about him.
But wait, it gets worse…pic.twitter.com/Nd3qbv60NZ
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) July 17, 2024
CNN reported that Saturday would have normally been a work day for Thomas, but he told his boss he wanted the day off because he had “something to do.”
“By 3 p.m. on Saturday, Thomas Matthew Crooks was at the security screening area for the Trump rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. He first aroused suspicion when he passed through the magnetometers carrying a rangefinder, which looks similar to a small pair of binoculars and is used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances when setting up a long-range shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation,” the news outlet said.
“The rangefinder would not have prevented Crooks from getting through the security screening point, but it did attract the attention of security personnel who kept an eye on him until he left the secure area,” CNN added.
Rally attendees later spotted him on the roof from which he would open fire just minutes later at 6:11 p.m.
Crooks’ motive remains a mystery.
Though he was a registered Republican, he had given $15 to Act Blue earmarked for the “Progressive Turnout Project” on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, according to Axios.
Crooks was 17 at the time he made the contribution.
The New York Post reported Wednesday that Matthew Crooks, who is a registered Libertarian, had been profiled by the Trump campaign in 2016 as a potential backer, given his support for the Second Amendment.
Mary Crooks is a Democrat.
All these facts are pieces to the puzzle that has not yet been solved, but one possible scenario is that the parents knew their son was anti-Trump, perhaps strongly enough that he did not want MAGA signs in their yard.
He then takes off work the day of the rally and takes an AR-15 from the home.
The parents put two-and-two together and realize their son might try to kill the former president at the rally.