The 20-year-old gunman who fired at former President Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday was a bad shot, his ex-classmate says.
Jameson Myers, who said he attended both elementary and high school with the suspect, Thomas Matthew Crooks, spoke to ABC News after the shooting, which left one rallygoer dead and two others injured.
Myers told ABC News Crooks had tried to join their high school’s rifle team, but was rejected and told not to try out again.
“He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered like, dangerous,” Myers said.
Myers graduated in 2022 with Crooks. According to CBS News, Myers was in the Bethel Park High School varsity rifle team. He told CBS he and Crooks were close in elementary school but not in high school.
Another anonymous rifle team member told ABC News that people believed Crooks “wasn’t really fit” to join them.
“He also shot terrible,” the team member said.
But Myers added that Crooks, who was killed at the scene by Secret Service agents, never acted like a “political revolutionary” and that he was a “very nice, even sweet guy.”
The rifle team’s coach declined to respond to ABC News’ queries. The school district told the outlet that Crooks had “never appeared on a roster” and that there was “no record” of him trying out.
The FBI confirmed Crook’s identity to Business Insider early on Sunday morning.
Crooks was a dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, the center said in a statement obtained by The Hill on Sunday. His motives for the attack are, at press time, unclear.
Outside school, Crooks was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a club with multiple pistol and rifle ranges in Clairton, Pennsylvania, CBS News reported.
He had used an AR-style 5.56 rifle that was legally purchased to shoot Trump and the spectator, FBI Pittsburgh Office Director Kevin Rojek said in a call with reporters on Sunday.
Trump was seen ducking for cover after gunshots rang out at his Saturday rally. Photographers later captured snapshots of Trump as he stood and pumped his fist at the crowd in defiance, with streaks of blood on his face.
He was then escorted off-stage by Secret Service agents.
The top of his ear was pierced with the bullet, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday. In an interview with the New York Post on Sunday, he said he was lucky to be alive.
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump said.
“By luck or by God, many people are saying it’s by God I’m still here,” he added.
He also told the Post that he thinks the Secret Service agents did a “fantastic job” gunning down the shooter.
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