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Would-be Trump assassin allegedly made cryptic threats against school, classmates

July 19, 2024 | | Print Article

New information on Thomas Crooks, former President Trump’s would-be assassin, is finally coming to light that is highly concerning but not surprising in the least.

The Daily Mail is reporting that he threatened to “shoot up” Bethel Park High School and “put bombs in the bathrooms” when he was 15 years old. No one took him seriously. In retrospect, they should have.

Federal officers paid a visit to Crook’s high school and spoke with former classmate Vincent Taormina. He was grilled about the shooter’s “hatred” of politicians and the threats that he made while attending the school.

“Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com Taormina said, ‘We had like this anonymous place you could post things or tell on someone on our computers at school and he posted something like ‘Don’t come to school tomorrow,’ and something else that made it sound like he’d put bombs in the cafeteria bathrooms,” the Daily Mail reported.

“Half of us just didn’t come to school the next day – I didn’t. But it wasn’t taken seriously. We all texted one another and it came out pretty quickly that it was Thomas and his friend group who’d made the threats to shoot [the school] up,” Taormina told the media outlet.

“There is no picture of Crooks in Bethel Park High School’s 2019 yearbook and in fact, only one appears to have been taken during his career at the school – the now widely seen 2020 picture which became the first published of him following his June 13 assassination attempt,” the Daily Mail noted.

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There is little information on Crooks, who was 20 at the time when he took aim at the former president. Now that he is dead, it is proving difficult to piece facts together about his life. At least, that is what everyone is being told.

The Daily Mail is calling him a “loner.” The media outlet also said that his search history included “major depressive disorder” and that it was suspected he suffered from schizophrenia or was bipolar.

What is surprising is that some of his former classmates called him “sweet, quiet, intelligent and a ‘loner’ who was a bit ‘off.'” Different accounts are saying different things about Crooks. Some say he hung out with a small group of friends while others say he ate lunch alone. Several claim he wasn’t bullied while others said he was. Even after COVID ended, he sported a mask long after he didn’t have to evidently. The consensus was that he was shy and strange.

“He recently graduated from the Community College of Allegheny County with an associate degree in engineering science this spring and had been admitted to both the University of Pittsburgh and Robert Morris University for the fall,” the Daily Mail wrote.

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No motive has been allegedly found yet for the attempted assassination but it could well be that Crooks just wanted the infamy and notoriety that would go with killing Trump.

Investigators have accessed both the shooter’s laptop and his phone which only had 27 contacts.

“The cells showed that Crooks visited the Butler site of the rally at least twice ahead of the event and contained photographs of Trump, Joe Biden, Fulton DA Fani Willis, Rudy Giuliani, House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and other politicians and celebrities as well as an unnamed member of the British royal family,” the Daily Mail stated.

“On Monday FBI agents visited his home, speaking with Crooks’s parents Matthew, 53, and Mary, 53, – both Pennsylvanian locals and both licensed counselors – for several minutes before fanning out and moving door to door across the neighborhood,” the outlet added.

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Friday, Crooks went to Clairton Sportsmen’s Club shooting range and practiced shooting.

“The next morning, he went to a Home Depot and purchased a five-foot ladder – pictures obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show the concealed spot where he propped this ladder against the AGR building wall allowing him access to the roof across which he scrambled to take up position,” the Daily Mail said. “From the Home Depot, he went to Allegheny Arms & Gun Works, a five-minute drive from his family home, where he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition.”

“On Monday FBI agents swarmed the AGR building from which Crooks fired his shots. DailyMail.com witnessed several as they inspected the roof, at one point one dropped to his belly, lying prone as Crooks had done as he took aim and fired at Trump as he addressed the crowd,” the media outlet revealed.

“They swept the grounds and rooted through shrubbery and trees, and they removed the ladder while questions continue to rage as to just how on earth a lone gunman managed to put it, and himself, there in the first place,” the Daily Mail continued.

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Crooks worked as a dietary aide at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

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