More on would-be-assassin Crooks
[NOTE: To be technical, Crooks is a murderer but only an attempted assassin. I haven’t seen a thing explaining where his victims at the rally were seated at the time they were hit, or the order of the shots. I assume we’ll find out in a while, but I wonder how much correct information we’ll ever get on this.]
Here’s the first article I’ve seen that attempts to track Crooks’ movements for the 24 hours prior to the shootings. It’s about what one would expect:
On Friday, Thomas Matthew Crooks visited the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club and practiced firing shots, a law enforcement official told CNN. …
Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, was also a member of the club, and the pair enjoyed going shooting there together, law enforcement said.
The club’s rifle range is about 200 yards long …
On Saturday morning, Crooks bought 50 rounds of ammunition at Allegheny Arms and Gun Works in Bethel Park. …
After his stop at the gun shop, Crooks went to a Home Depot, where he purchased a five-foot ladder. A receipt for the ladder was later found in his pocket. …
He used an AR-style rifle that was registered to his father. The weapon — as well as the over 20 other guns registered to Matthew Crooks — was purchased legally.
Investigators found an explosive device in Crooks’ car and a transmitter on his body, suggesting that he may have intended to stage a distraction during the shooting.
Crooks’ parents seem rather clueless about this – which makes sense if Crooks was the sort of quiet person who kept his mouth shut about what might be going on inside him, but apparently showed few signs of disturbance except social isolation.
As for motive, I don’t think it’s so puzzling at all. The motive was most likely notoriety. Crooks seems to have been a total nonentity, smart but making little to no mark on the world or anyone in it. Trump is probably the world’s most famous person. Whether Crooks hated Trump or not will never be known, although it’s probable that he did. But even without such hatred, the desire to go down in history as a mastermind assassin would be plenty enough motive to do this and to be willing to die in the attempt.
Typo, second paragraph. “Brooks” should be “Crooks.”
Kate:
Thanks, will fix
Just another sad, pathetic, misanthropic creature seeking notoriety through infamy as well as his own death. It’s very a familiar story. I wouldn’t be surprised if very little ends up being discovered about his motivations in terms some sort of writen diatribe or manifesto or whatever. It’s likely that he had his own internal world that he lived in and he may not have even thought much about people outside it.
Just found this: Man pretended he was Trump rally shooter in a viral video | Fact check
My previous comment may be from a hoax – delete that comment when you get a chance, neo…
Karmi:
Done.
Oof, Sean Davis is pissed, and giving no rhetorical quarter today:
https://thefederalist.com/2024/07/16/bidens-team-deliberately-kneecapped-trumps-security-to-allow-an-assassination-attempt/
I saw an interview with a couple of his high school classmates and they said he was odd and the interviewer asked what he meant by odd and one of his examples was he continued to wear a mask long after everybody else had stopped which I thought was perfect.
“He was funny-lookin'”
“In which way was he funny-lookin’?”
“He wasn’t circumcized”
“Apart of that, was he funny-lookin’ in any other way?”
“Oh, just in a general way”
I call my big clown cat ‘Bozo’. I should stop that, because he might think I am associating him with the clown show that our government, at nearly every level, has become.
Miracles happen; and Trump lives another day. Is he truly a ‘man of destiny’?
We may never know, but it occurs that the kid’s Social Worker/Therapist father thought that shooting together would give the apparent lost soul some sense of empowerment. If so, I grieve for the parents along with the families who suffered great loss at his hands.
At any rate, waiting for the ban guns rhetoric.
Oldflyer:
All parents are hostages to fate.
The book by Dylan Klebold’s mother is truly heartbreaking, for example.
There is that fake video of a man claiming to be Crooks saying, “You got the wrong guy.”
There is also a video of a student at Arizona State throwing a fit at a table the young Republicans set out and saying that he wanted to slit all of their fascist throats, and that student is said to be Crooks. It turns out not to be, as the video is from 2020 when Crooks was still in high school. Crooks did go on to community college in Pennsylvania, not ASU.
neo:
Great article snag!
Am I losing my google-fu? I’ve been looking for info on Crooks and not finding nearly as much as I want.
My god. He actually purchased a ladder at Home Depot, brought it to the site and climbed up a wall to the closest roof (aside from those occupied by SS counter-snipers) with line of sight to Trump?
But I can believe it.
I think you nailed motive too.
huxley, it seems that lots of good information can be found by just reading the NY Post. 🙂
Take a look at the photo in this X post, by PA politician Sean Parnell. The negligence of the security arrangements is egregious.
https://twitter.com/SeanParnellUSA/status/1813240829919539633
Who will bell that mayorkas biden none of the above. Well they did make a scapegoat of the head of the border patrol, reyes wasnt it but he was on the other
I wonder if the reports that the shooter had no social media accounts is really true. I also wonder if the authorities are looking in the right place. Rather than Facebook, Twitter, and Instapundit, I’d check out discussion forums and gamer sites. Remember Jack Teixiera, the airman who posted classified documents on the gamer site Discord to impress his pals. The shooter was said to spend much of his time playing videogames.
I am reposting this from a previous thread, as some may find it pertinent to this thread.
Art Deco
I also wondered about that. Twenty years old, apparently bright, working at a nursing home but no college attendance in his life?
Turns out he went to a community college, and did quite well. Pittsburgh Post Gazette:More details emerge about Thomas Crooks, the Bethel Park man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump
More information about the recluse family he belonged to:
The Kovalik surname rang a bell. Dan Kovalik, who has also published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is an attorney cum “human rights investigator” who has written some far-left crazy type of books.
Such as one defending Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela. Or defending Russia in the Ukraine war. That to me is far-left crazy.
As both Daniel Kovalik and Sandy Kovalik are in the Pittsburgh area, it is quite possible that they are related. The Kovalik surname isn’t very common.
Given that Crooks had little interaction with his neighbors, such as Sandy Kovalik, it is not likely that there was any contact between Thomas Crooks and Daniel Kovalik, a presumed relative of Crooks’s neighbor Sandy Kovalik.
Just one of those interesting coincidences.
Also note that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had news about Crooks purchasing ammunition before the NY Post did.(July 16, 9:45 a.m.) Gunman bought ammo at Bethel Park gun store hours before deadly shooting at Trump rally, sources say (July 15 @ 2:32 p.m.)
Kate
Yes, indeed. The first example I saw of the unprotected roof was from a BBC interview on-the-spot on Saturday. An ordinary man in the street caught this. Doesn’t say much about the Secret Service. Or maybe it means that their Service to the country is a Secret.
Gringo – There is a lot of Eastern European stock in western PA – from families whose ancestors came in the 19th and early 20th centuries to work in the steel mills. It is not at all a given that two people with the name Kovalik are closely related.
That pointy chin he had was creepy. I am glad he was blown away. His parents seem like mediocrities as well.
Crooks instagram account gives this address:
16001 Anti Fascist
He also would fit in well with antifa based on his looks.
Koval means “blacksmith” and related surnames are equivalent to “Smith” in a number of Slavic languages. E.g. Stanley Kowalski. Ergo I don’t think “Kovalik” is all that uncommon.