Thomas Matthew Crooks

Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July 2024, and was shot and killed at the scene. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs describes him as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Two congressional investigations — the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump and the Senate committee — examined the shooting in detail; both concentrated on security failures, and the House Task Force stated that his motivations “remain largely unknown.”

The Days Before the Rally

The FBI timeline supplied to the House Task Force records that on 5 July 2024 Crooks searched for the dates of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. On 6 July he registered to attend the Butler rally and ran searches including “how far away was oswald from kennedy,” “butler farm show grounds” and “where will trump speak from at butler farm show.” On 7 July he drove to the Butler Farm Show grounds, parked nearby, walked part of the exterior fence line, and drove in the vicinity of the grounds and the adjacent American Glass Research (AGR) property before returning toward Bethel Park.

On 8 and 9 July he searched for “AGR International” and for photographs of the Butler Farm Show. On 10 July he searched the Butler weather forecast and bought a backpack. On 12 July, the day before the rally, he visited a gun range in Clairton, Pennsylvania.

13 July 2024

According to the same timeline, Crooks bought a ladder in Bethel Park around 9:30 a.m. and purchased fifty rounds of Hornady .223 Remington ammunition en route to the rally. The rifle he used, a black DPMS/Panther Arms semi-automatic, had been legally transferred to him the previous year.

He returned to the vicinity of the grounds at 3:48 p.m. and, at roughly 3:50 p.m., flew a drone over the area for about eleven minutes; the House Task Force found that the Secret Service counter-drone detection system in place gave no alert before shots were fired. Three local law enforcement officers independently noticed him behaving suspiciously around 5:00 p.m. A local sniper photographed him and observed him using a rangefinder; a description and the photographs circulated among local officers from about 5:15 p.m. onward, and at 5:42 p.m. a local sniper team leader phoned a description to the Secret Service.

The FBI placed his vehicle on Whitestown Road near the AGR complex, and recorded that he returned to it several times between 4:44 p.m. and 5:47 p.m. Video from a nearby business shows him climbing to the roof of an AGR building via an air-conditioning unit in an alcove at approximately 6:05 p.m., and moving across the complex’s roofs between 6:05 and 6:08 p.m. Bystanders saw him and called police.

At 6:11 p.m. he fired eight rounds toward the rally stage. A Butler County Emergency Services Unit counter-assault team leader fired one shot at him from near the stage, and a Secret Service counter-sniper fired the round that killed him — approximately 15.5 seconds after the first shot, by the Task Force’s timeline. A medic pronounced him dead on the roof at 6:25 p.m.

His bullets struck attendees Corey Comperatore, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. Comperatore died of his wounds. Trump was grazed on the right ear and sustained injuries the Task Force described as non-life-threatening.

Explosive Devices

Officers who searched his body on the roof recovered a handheld radio transmitter resembling a garage-door opener. Bomb squads and military explosive ordnance disposal teams swept the AGR complex and found no devices there. Investigators later located two improvised explosive devices in his vehicle and a third, partially assembled, in his bedroom.

The FBI’s laboratory analysis, as summarized by the House Task Force, found that the two devices in the vehicle each consisted of an ammunition box containing a cardboard tube with explosive filler and a main charge, wired to a commercially sold “AlphaFire” radio receiver and an electric match. The main charge combined ammonium nitrate prills, nitromethane and smokeless powder, all components legal to buy and readily available online. The two vehicle devices were fully assembled and paired to the transmitter found on his body, which was powered and set to “off.” The FBI concluded that, properly assembled and initiated, an explosion from these devices “could cause property damage, personal injury, and/or death.” The bedroom device lacked a completed fuzing system but had its receiver pre-programmed and paired to the same transmitter.

What the Investigations Did Not Determine

Both congressional inquiries were oversight investigations of the U.S. Secret Service rather than investigations of Crooks himself, and both said so. The House Task Force, whose report text was unanimously approved on 5 December 2024 and filed on 10 December as H. Rept. 118-873, wrote in its conclusion that the motivations of Crooks and of Ryan Routh — the man arrested after a separate incident in West Palm Beach on 15 September 2024 — “remain largely unknown,” and said relevant committees might seek to address that question. It recorded that the FBI conducted more than 1,000 interviews but gave the Task Force access to only 81 interview reports, comprising roughly 180 pages and containing significant redactions.

No congressional report reviewed for this page attributes a political motive, affiliation, or ideology to Crooks.

What Is Not Established Here

The page previously carried birthYear: 2003. The sources fetched for this audit establish only that Crooks was 20 years old at the time of the shooting, which is consistent with a 2003 or a 2004 birth year; no first-party record of his date of birth was obtainable, so the field was removed rather than guessed.

The page’s two existing citations were checked and both were found to be described inaccurately. The URL given for the House Task Force report pointed at the Task Force’s press release, not the report; the release is real, dated 10 December 2024, but its title was recorded incorrectly and it does not state that Crooks was shot and killed, as its note claimed. The NBC News article is real and its headline, byline and date were confirmed, but it does not report that Secret Service counter-snipers killed the gunman, nor does it give his age — both claims its note attributed to it. The report text itself has been added from govinfo and now carries those facts.

Nothing is recorded here about Crooks’ family, who are private individuals, beyond the fact that the rifle was legally transferred to him in the year before the attack. He was never charged with any offense; he was killed at the scene, and the only official accounts of the day are investigative rather than judicial. Claims circulating about his political registration, online activity, mental health, or personal history are not repeated here because no source meeting this project’s standard was located for them.