- A 20-year-old man opened fire on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one rally attendee.
- A former classmate said the gunman was a poor shooter and had been removed from his high school rifle team.
- “He was a bad shooter and was told not to come back,” the classmate told ABC News.
The 20-year-old gunman who opened fire on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday was a poor shot, his former classmate said.
Jameson Myers, who said he attended elementary and high school with suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, spoke to ABC News after the shooting that left one protester dead and two injured.
Myers told ABC News that Crooks had tried to join his high school rifle team but was rejected and told not to try out again.
“Not only did he not make the team, he was asked not to return because he was a poor shooter and was deemed dangerous,” Myers said.
Myers graduated with Crooks in 2022. According to CBS News, Myers was on the varsity rifle team at Bethel Park High School. He told CBS that he and Crooks were close in elementary school, but not in high school.
Another rifle unit member, who asked not to be named, told ABC News that people thought Crooks was “not really suitable to join the unit.”
“His shooting was awful too,” one team member said.
But Myers added that Crooks, who was shot dead by Secret Service agents at the scene, never behaved like a “political revolutionary” and was a “very good, kind person.”
The rifle team coach did not respond to questions from ABC News, but the school district told the news outlet that Crooks “has never been on the roster” and there is “no record” of him ever trying out.
The FBI confirmed Crook’s identity to Business Insider early Sunday morning.
Crooks was a dietitian at Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, according to a statement from the center obtained by The Hill on Sunday. At press time, the suspect’s motive for the attack was unknown.
Outside of school, Crooks was a member of the Clairton Sportsman’s Club in Clairton, Pennsylvania, which owns several pistol and rifle shooting ranges, according to CBS News.
Kevin Rojek, director of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said in a conference call with reporters on Sunday that the suspect used a legally purchased AR-style 5.56-caliber rifle to shoot Trump and the crowd.
Trump was seen ducking for cover after gunfire rang out at the rally on Saturday, and photographers later snapped a snapshot of him defiantly raising his fist at the crowd, his face bloodied.
He was then escorted off the stage by Secret Service agents.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday that he was shot with a bullet lodged in the top of his ear. In an interview with the New York Post on Sunday, he said he was lucky to be alive.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here, I was supposed to be dead,” Trump said.
“A lot of people say it’s either luck or God that I’m still here,” he added.
He also told the Post that he thought Secret Service agents “did a fantastic job” in killing the shooter.
