Former President Trump Targeted in Assassination Attempt

Thomas Crooks led a deeply compartmentalized double life, presenting himself as a standout engineering student while secretly building explosives and researching how to carry out an assassination.

On July 13, 2024, the 20 year old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania fired eight shots from a rooftop at a Donald Trump rally in Butler, killing firefighter Corey Comperatore and wounding Trump and two others before a Secret Service sniper killed him.

Outwardly he earned a 1530 SAT score and praise from professors, yet in his final month he searched the presidential campaign more than 60 times, flew a drone over the venue, and assembled homemade bombs and remote detonators.

Friends described a quiet, isolated young man from a family of social workers, and one childhood friend said he was never once invited inside Crooks's home.

Investigators interviewed more than 25 people and combed through thousands of documents but found no manifesto or written explanation.

His political motivations remain unclear, leaving authorities unable to say definitively why he targeted Trump.

The questions raised by the Butler shooting have narrowed but not closed. In November 2025 the FBI ended an inquiry spanning 485 personnel and more than 1,000 interviews, concluding Thomas Crooks acted alone and leaving his motive unknown The Washington Times. The Secret Service bore the institutional cost: six agents drew suspensions of ten to forty two days without pay, former director Kimberly Cheatle had resigned ten days after the gunfire, and an independent panel called the agency bureaucratic, complacent and static ABC News. Congress had already passed the Enhanced Presidential Security Act, signed October 1, 2024, mandating uniform protection standards for presidents and candidates.