The FBI has identified the shooter in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Pennsylvania, US media reported early Sunday.
“The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the subject involved in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania,” the FBI said in a statement cited by NBC and CBS.
Crooks, who was from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was a registered Republican, according to state election records.
Trump was shot in the ear during a campaign rally on Saturday, sending the Republican presidential nominee's blood all over his face and prompting his security forces to surround him, before he emerged and raised his fist in the air, mouthing the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The shooter was killed, one rally-goer was killed and two other spectators were wounded, the Secret Service said in a statement. The incident is being investigated as an attempted murder, a source told Reuters.
Trump, 78, had just begun his speech when the shots rang out. He grabbed his right ear with his right hand and then lowered his hand to look at it before kneeling behind the podium before Secret Service agents covered him.
He appeared about a minute later, had removed his red “Make America Great Again” hat and could be heard saying “wait, wait” before fist-bumping and then being quickly led by officers to a black SUV.
“I was shot with a bullet that went through the top of my right ear,” Trump later said on his Truth Social platform after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh. “There was a lot of bleeding.”
Trump's campaign said he was “doing well.”
The shooting occurred less than four months before the Nov. 5 election, when Trump faces a rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. Most opinion polls, including those by Reuters/Ipsos, show the two in a tight race.
Biden said in a statement: “There is no place for this kind of violence in America. We must come together as one nation to condemn it.”
