PA - Assassination attempt, shooting injures former POTUS Donald Trump, leaves 1 spectator deceased two in critical condition, 13 July 2024 #3

[Diddian]

That is an example of 'magical thinking,' the idea I am going to commit a high-profile crime but I will be back on my regular job tomorrow.

May also simply be cover, avoiding suspicious behavior. “This is just a routine vacation or personal day, not anything out of the ordinary.”

 

[Chimera]

May also simply be cover, avoiding suspicious behavior. “This is just a routine vacation or personal day, not anything out of the ordinary.”

Agreed.
Someone who seemingly blended in so much that they were practically invisible.

 

[Diddian]

Curious how TMC's parents handled this or didn't especially since both are some kind of therapist?
His classmate said the threat was not taken seriously.

Trump shooter Thomas Crooks threatened to 'shoot up' his ...​

View attachment 518894
Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk › news › article-13648833




17 hours ago — During the spring of 2019, Crooks, then 15, threatened to shoot up his own high school. The threat was dissmissed then but now the FBI is ...

If the threat wasn’t taken seriously, it should have been. If I were a parent of a child at that school, I’d want such threats to be investigated rather than shrugged off.

And if TMC’s father was aware TMC had made such a threat against fellow classmates in the past, then there is NO EXCUSE for his permitting TMC access to his firearm without supervising his use of it.

 

[Chimera]

I don't think it had anything to do with politics.

If he wanted to hurt his parents, which I think he did, it's deeper than political differences, imo.

jmo

Agreed !
And, in some twisted way, he wanted notoriety as well ?
Omo.

 

[Inthedetails]

Agreed !
And, in some twisted way, he wanted notoriety as well ?
Omo.

Yes, I think he wanted his name to be part of American history for all time, and for his deeds to be international news, upsetting as many people as possible across the world....while at the same time hurting people close to him like his family and the rifle team that he wasn't good enough to join.

Edited to add: He likely wanted to show he was smarter than LE and SS too. imo


jmo

 

[photoprose1122]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1814290598733508644

https://twitter.com/x/status/1814165712463610055

Interesting that he searched crumbly… perhaps to gauge whether his actions would affect his parents? Did he want them convicted, or was he worried his actions would get them in trouble?

 

[photoprose1122]

If the threat wasn’t taken seriously, it should have been. If I were a parent of a child at that school, I’d want such threats to be investigated rather than shrugged off.

And if TMC’s father was aware TMC had made such a threat against fellow classmates in the past, then there is NO EXCUSE for his permitting TMC access to his firearm without supervising his use of it.

Was it confirmed he actually made that threat?

 

[Diddian]

Was it confirmed he actually made that threat?

It is the Daily Mail that reports the FBI is investigating this former incident (see the link in the post I was replying to). DM quotes a former classmate who says he was interviewed by the FBI about the former incident. So, confirmation by the interviewee, yes per Daily Mail. Confirmation by the FBI, not to my knowledge, nor would I expect it until the investigation is complete.

 

[MassGuy]

And the Crumbly kid, the school shooter whose parents were convicted:


"The Trump rally shooter searched online for information on the arrest of a Michigan mass shooter and his parents, who were prosecuted in a 2021 high school shooting. He visited websites for how to build explosives. And in the minutes before he fired shots in an attempted assassination of Donald Trump, he screenshotted a picture from a livestream of the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.

A week before the shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks searched online for the date of the Democratic National Convention and where Trump planned to speak, as well as other searches for Trump and President Joe Biden."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/19/politics/trump-rally-shooter-searches/index.html

I think most of my questions about him are close to being answered. Obviously I’d like more on motive, but these searches all jibe with a guy who wanted to be something in death that he couldn’t be in life. Relevant.

One emerging theory by investigators, based in part on the timing and subjects of his online searches, is that the shooter was looking to carry out a mass shooting and that the Trump event’s proximity and timing offered the most ready opportunity, according to a US official briefed on the matter.

 

[Gemmie]

except they quoted his former classmate - do you think the former classmate is remembering the wrong person?

OK, here's what I find odd since I dug deeper after your post. (Thank you for challenging me. ) That 2 teenagers both threatened the same high school 5 years ago about the same time. ~5/16/19 for XC and "Spring" for TMC. What are the odds? I'd think pretty darn rare. Especially since Bethel Park only had ~32,000 people back in 2019. Pretty slim odds indeed.

'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.
'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.'

This was Crooks the year before that alleged threat:

Trump shooter Thomas Crooks threatened to 'shoot up' his high school

During the spring of 2019, Crooks, then 15, threatened to shoot up his own high school. The threat was dissmissed then but now the FBI is investigating.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Keeping things together: Teen charged with threats against Bethel Park High School

 

[Inthedetails]

I think most of my questions about him are close to being answered. Obviously I’d like more on motive, but these searches all jibe with a guy who wanted to be something in death that he couldn’t be in life. Relevant.

One emerging theory by investigators, based in part on the timing and subjects of his online searches, is that the shooter was looking to carry out a mass shooting and that the Trump event’s proximity and timing offered the most ready opportunity, according to a US official briefed on the matter.

Have we heard about what day the shooter went to the rally site? How many days in advance was that? Could it have been just the day before? I'd like to know when he arrived that day too - was he there before the crowds arrived?

jmo

Edited to add the word "rally" as I'm talking about the location, not a website.

 

[Sundog]

I think most of my questions about him are close to being answered. Obviously I’d like more on motive, but these searches all jibe with a guy who wanted to be something in death that he couldn’t be in life. Relevant.

One emerging theory by investigators, based in part on the timing and subjects of his online searches, is that the shooter was looking to carry out a mass shooting and that the Trump event’s proximity and timing offered the most ready opportunity, according to a US official briefed on the matter.

Agree, that''s where we are now with the information we have so far. The investigation is ongoing, so we don't know yet if it will develop in other directions as the investigation continues.

 

[MassGuy]

Have we heard about what day the shooter went to the rally site? How many days in advance was that? Could it have been just the day before? I'd like to know when he arrived that day too - was he there before the crowds arrived?

jmo

Edited to add the word "rally" as I'm talking about the location, not a website.

Apparently he first scoped out the site 6 days before, which would be only 4 days after the rally was first announced. The Secret Service assessment was the day after he may have visited.

Gunman Might Have Scoped Out Site Six Days Before Trump Rally

The would-be assassin also had a bulletproof jacket in his car that he did not wear when he opened fire on the former president, along with several magazines for a rifle.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Inthedetails]

OK, here's what I find odd since I dug deeper after your post. (Thank you for challenging me. ) That 2 teenagers both threatened the same high school 5 years ago about the same time. ~5/16/19 for XC and "Spring" for TMC. What are the odds? I'd think pretty darn rare. Especially since Bethel Park only had ~32,000 people back in 2019. Pretty slim odds indeed.

'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.
'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.'

This was Crooks the year before that alleged threat:

View attachment 518914

Trump shooter Thomas Crooks threatened to 'shoot up' his high school

During the spring of 2019, Crooks, then 15, threatened to shoot up his own high school. The threat was dissmissed then but now the FBI is investigating.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Keeping things together: Teen charged with threats against Bethel Park High School

Thanks for finding that info.

jmo

 

[Inthedetails]

Apparently he first scoped out the site 6 days before, which would be only 4 days after the rally was first announced. The Secret Service assessment was the day after he may have visited.

Gunman Might Have Scoped Out Site Six Days Before Trump Rally

The would-be assassin also had a bulletproof jacket in his car that he did not wear when he opened fire on the former president, along with several magazines for a rifle.

www.nytimes.com

Now I really want a timeline of what the perp did the week before the rally! Any clues to his plans that were missed??

jmo

 

[Ruminations]

Mentioned in the article I posted and by a poster here was the height of some of the SS agents surrounding Trump.
From what I remember it was just the 2 women who were much shorter than Trump so that is something that needs to be changed when he or any president or ex-president is in public.

I disagree with this.

Those SS agents, all of them, put Trumps lives ahead of their own. We watched them try to dissuade from worrying about the shoe, and IMO, when they said shooter down, they felt it was a good time to move Trump ducked to the armored vehicle where they would all be safer. They had no plans for picking up shoes and doing fist pumps.

There is a good chance there can be some lessons learned with SS after this attempt. But there is no evidence IMO that any of the brave agents who quickly wrapped their bullet-absorbing bodies around the candidate did anything wrong. They were heroes.

Any potential failures were about proper pre planning and communications. Not about brave agents who happened to be shorter than the famously non-compliant candidate.

And the responsibility for the violence lies with the shooter.

MOO

 

[Inthedetails]

Oh, good grief. It's almost pointless trying to keep this thread on topic.

Shout out to the patience of the mods.

 

[Fabled Automatic]

I disagree with this.

Those SS agents, all of them, put Trumps lives ahead of their own. We watched them try to dissuade from worrying about the shoe, and IMO, when they said shooter down, they felt it was a good time to move Trump ducked to the armored vehicle where they would all be safer. They had no plans for picking up shoes and doing fist pumps.

There is a good chance there can be some lessons learned with SS after this attempt. But there is no evidence IMO that any of the brave agents who quickly wrapped their bullet-absorbing bodies around the candidate did anything wrong. They were heroes.

Any potential failures were about proper pre planning and communications. Not about brave agents who happened to be shorter than the famously non-compliant candidate.

And the responsibility for the violence lies with the shooter.

MOO

Yeah, I just can't reconcile, "The SS let him down" but also, "I'm glad he defied them and rose above to pump his fist"... Which is it?

 

[MassGuy]

Now I really want a timeline of what the perp did the week before the rally! Any clues to his plans that were missed??

jmo

We’ve seen no overt signs that would have told LE or the SS this was coming, and I doubt they exist.

He doesn’t appear to have posted radical things online, or made a direct threat that people would have seen.

As it stands, I think the only people who could have stopped him prior to this were his parents, and I’d love to know what they had to say.

I’m sure he didn’t tell them of his plans, but he was likely building bombs in his bedroom. I’d like to think I’d know if my kids were doing something like that.

Outside of that, I don’t think there was any way to stop this beforehand. If normal security protocols were followed though, this guy would have been intercepted long before he had any chance to get on that roof.

 

[MacPlus512]

I've been processing all of this for a few days, and I have more questions than anything. I'm about an hour away from where this happened so it hit far too close to home. I even knew someone who almost went to this rally but backed out last minute. My church is only about 20 minutes from there.

My question here: where were the parents? Couldn't they have seen anything given their occupation? Was their son really that good at hiding some sort of possible underlying mental health issue? Could it be something developed later? Schizophrenia has a tendency to develop around the age he was. Still, wouldn't there have been something the parents would have picked up?