Thomas Matthew Crooks, who later attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, had threatened to “shoot up” his high school five years prior to targeting the ex-president. Criminologists suggest this earlier threat may provide insight into his motives for the assassination attempt.
The warning led to dozens of students at Bethel Park High School staying home for the day, but school officials dismissed the incident at the time, according to his former classmates.
Vincent Taormina, told the DailyMail, “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.”
She continued, “Half of us just didn’t come to school the next day- I didn’t. But it wasn’t taken seriously,” adding, “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.’
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The previously overlooked threats are now a key focus of the FBI’s investigation into Thomas Matthew Crooks, especially given the similarities to the attack he carried out at the Trump campaign rally over the weekend.
Crooks fired up to seven shots from the roof of a building in an apparent attempt to assassinate Trump. Instead, he killed a married father of two and seriously injured two others in the audience, while Trump sustained only a grazed ear.
Investigators later discovered explosive devices in Crooks’ car, which was parked near the rally site. Crooks was 15 years old when he allegedly made the threats in 2019—the same year his photo was conspicuously absent from the high school yearbook.
During that period, Crooks was “relentlessly” bullied by his peers, who described him as a loner and mockingly called him “the school shooter.” He was also excluded from extracurricular social clubs, including the school’s rifle team, according to classmates.
One criminologist suggested that the constant teasing and isolation may have contributed to his decision to open fire at the Pennsylvania rally.
Dr. John Cencich, a professor and criminologist at Penn West University, told WXPI, “Thomas Crooks, the shooter in this case, has or has experienced major depression disorder. That fits quite in line with the pathway to violence on a threat assessment.”
In the months leading up to his attack, Crooks sharpened his shooting skills and chose a prominent target to demonstrate his prowess to his classmates. A criminologist likened this to John Hinckley’s attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan in a bid to impress actress Jodie Foster.
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