The FBI said the shooter, who is dead, was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. A motive was not clear.
The gunman was immediately “neutralized” by the Secret Service, chief of communications Anthony Guglielmi said.
Crooks used a semi-automatic rifle, three senior U.S. law enforcement officials said, based on what was found at the scene.
Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.
Pennsylvania voter records listed a Thomas Matthew Crooks with the same address and birth date as a registered Republican, though it was not clear from the records when that was put in place.
At a news conference Saturday night, law enforcement said the investigation was close to making a positive identification of the shooter, who did not have identification on him, state police Lt. Col. George Bivens said.
“The shooter has been tentatively identified,” he said. “It’s a matter of doing biometric confirmations.”
Was the Trump shooter a Republican?
State voter records show that Crooks was a registered Republican and the upcoming November 5 election would have been the first time Crooks had been old enough to vote in a presidential race.
However, when he was 17 he made a $15 donation to ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for left-leaning and Democratic politicians, according to a 2021 Federal Election Commission filing. The donation was earmarked for the Progressive Turnout Project, a national group that rallies Democrats to vote.
Explosive found in suspect’s car
Crooks was carrying explosives in his vehicle, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The US-based outlet cited unnamed people briefed on the investigation as saying that explosives were found inside the car, which was parked near the Trump rally.
“We’re looking at photographs right now and we’re trying to run his DNA and get biometric confirmation,” Kevin Rojek, FBI special agent in charge, said during a press briefing.
Crooks’s father, Matthew Crooks, 53, told CNN that he was also trying to figure out what happened and would wait until he spoke to law enforcement before speaking about his son.
USA Today reported that dozens of law enforcement vehicles have been stationed outside a residence listed at the address on Crooks’s voter registration record. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are also on the scene and a bomb squad is at the residence.
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