What was the Trump rally shooter's motive? No online clues deepen the mystery
Trump suspect phone
BETHEL PARK, Pa. — Authorities said Monday that they had accessed the phone of the person who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump and had completed searches of his car and his family’s home in suburban Pittsburgh as ongoing efforts to understand the shooter’s motives have so far come up empty.
The FBI said its investigation remains in the “early stages,” but the immediate lack of a clear motive for Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has only deepened the mystery around the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, more than 24 hours after authorities released his name. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was whisked off the stage during the shooting, which killed a former fire chief and injured two other people.
Gregg McCrary, a former FBI profiler who spent more than 25 years with the bureau, first as a field agent and then in the behavioral science unit, said the lack of information about Crooks, 20, poses a challenge for law enforcement.
“This guy is one of these almost invisible people that are out there,” he said. “They’re not on social media. They’re not screaming or yelling about this or that. They’re ruminating about it internally — whatever it might be. And they just decide to do this, which scares the hell out of all of us in law enforcement.”
“Some people say it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he added. “That’s not really it. A better way to think about it is to try and predict which piece of hay is going to become a needle.”
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