United States – FBI officials said police observed the Pennsylvania man, who attempted to assassinate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, over an hour before the July 13 shooting and documented him by taking his photo that was going to be circulated amongst the other police officers.
“The shooter was reported to police as being suspicious,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said at a press briefing where he provided an update on the agency’s investigation of the assassination attempt, as reported by Reuters.
Events Leading Up to the Shooting
He told the paper that an officer from the local police force snapped a picture of gunman Thomas Crooks and passed it to other officers at the scene of Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania that day. Roughly 30 more minutes later, according to Rojek, the SWAT team operators observed Crooks with a rangefinder and news websites.
Crooks was also captured in the CCTV footage dropping a backpack at around 5:56 p.m., twenty minutes before the shooting occurred, and was also seen at 6:08 p.m. walking on the roof from where he fired the shots, Rojek said.
While the FBI is not the federal bureau that investigates any breaches of Trump’s security, FBI personnel are currently charting a timeline, he added.
Ongoing Investigation and Motive
The FBI officials said that the motive for Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman, was still unknown, and he was killed by a Secret Service Agent.
But they said he had made prior Web searches on prior mass shooting events, on IEDs, and on the attempted murder of the Slovakian premier in May.
Trump, who has often accused the FBI, has been willing to undergo a standard victim’s interview, which “will be similar to any typical victims interview,” Rojek stated. “We want to hear his view. ”
Rojek agreed that the bullet impacted Trump, whether “whole or in the form of fragments. ”
The FBI officials said that Crooks was socially isolated, and they could not name a single friend or associate, though he had relatives.
Background
Speaking to the reporters, the FBI officials said that he used an encrypted application to make 25 firearm-related purchases and six chemical precursors used to make explosive devices, as reported by Reuters.
His longtime passion for science and doing science experiments elicited no alarm from his parents, who the FBI accused of being compliant with their probe.