A Pennsylvania gun enthusiast has revealed he practiced shooting with former President Trump’s would-be assassin just weeks before the 20-year-old opened fire at a campaign rally.
Gunfighter Thomas Matthew Crooks and U.S. Air Force veteran Bill Jenkins, 63, signed up for the same Intermediate Pistol – Pistol 2 class at the Keystone Shooting Center in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, on June 22.
It was just the two of them on the field when Crooks reportedly blew a large hole in a target with a burst of precision bullets from his own 9mm pistol.
“I was sitting next to evil.” Jenkins told The SunI haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
‘This guy killed a man with a wife and kids, and almost threw the country into chaos by killing Donald Trump.’
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, had been practicing shooting at a gun range just weeks before he opened fire at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally.
When he met Crooks, Jenkins said he realized “this kid was confident with guns.”
“When we went to the range, he started shooting right away,” he said of Crooks.
‘It seemed like he had experience with weapons.’
Jenkins went on to note that when they were practicing shooting at a target 10 yards away, Crooks “put a big hole in the center piece.”
“I congratulated him on how well he had done and he just laughed.”
Crooks, Jenkins and their instructor then returned to the classroom, when, Jenkins said, the conversation turned political.
“It turns out that the instructor and I are both Trump supporters,” he said.
‘We talked about how great our country was under Trump. Our borders were secure, the economy was strong, we were energy independent, and he got things done.
“At that moment I noticed that the boy wasn’t saying anything, but I saw him smile. He had a small smile.”
U.S. Air Force veteran Bill Jenkins recounted how Crooks “put a big hole in the centerpiece” of a target 10 yards away.
Jenkins said he didn’t think anything of it at the time and believed Crooks was just a quiet but generally “good kid.”
“In retrospect, I think he was biting his tongue,” she said after the July 13 shooting. “Nothing we discussed would have sat well with him.”
“It occurred to me: Did that conversation help push him over the edge?” Jenkins asked rhetorically, as the motive for the shooting remained unclear.
“It scares me a little bit because a person has died,” he said, referring to former firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Jenkins said he didn’t realize for a few days that the man he trained with was the same man who shot Trump on July 13.
For a few days, Jenkins said, he didn’t realize that the man who opened fire at Trump’s rally was the same one he had trained with just weeks earlier.
‘It was only when the FBI field office in Pittsburgh called me on Tuesday, while I was driving, and asked me about the class at Keystone, that I found out.
“The guy said, ‘The other person in class with you was the shooter who shot Trump, and I freaked out,'” he said.
“When I looked at the photos, I could see it was him.”
He said FBI agents asked him if Crooks had a bag with him, to which Jenkins replied that he did.
“I was sitting next to a truly evil being, it really scared me,” Jenkins added. “He could have shot us at the shooting range.”
“He tried to plunge the country into chaos. Maybe that was his motive: he wanted to cause a real catastrophe in this country.”
Criminals punched Trump in the ear and killed a retired firefighter at a rally in Pennsylvania
The attackers arrived at Trump’s rally three hours before opening fire, arousing the suspicions of the Secret Service because they were carrying a rangefinder used by hunters to take long-distance shots.
Law enforcement even took a photograph of Crooks an hour before the shooting.
But he was never arrested or questioned.
Crooks was then able to climb onto the roof of the building just over 100 metres away, in direct view of some of the protesters, who attempted to alert police to the figure crawling along the roof clutching a rifle.
“We saw a guy crawling like an army, like a bear, across the roof of the building next to us, 15 metres away,” Greg Smith told the BBC. “We could clearly see a rifle.”
“We were aiming at him, the police were down there running around on the ground, and we were like, ‘Hey, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police didn’t know what was going on.”
Smith said he tried to alert authorities but thought they couldn’t see the gunman because of the slope of the roof.
“I was like, ‘Why is Trump still talking? Why hasn’t he been removed from the stage? ’… And all of a sudden, five shots rang out,” she said.
The gunmen then shot Trump and killed retired volunteer fire chief Comperatore, before being killed by authorities at the scene.
Crooks was shot dead by local authorities after he opened fire from a nearby rooftop.
Trump has since revealed that “no one mentioned” Crooks to him, despite the fact that he was being watched for “an hour” before the shooting.
“Mistakes were made,” Fox News’ Jesse Watters told Trump. “They were watching this guy for an hour beforehand. Didn’t anybody tell him not to go on stage?”
“Nobody mentioned it,” the former president replied. “Nobody said it was a problem.”
“They could have said, ‘Let’s wait 15, 20 minutes, five minutes.’ Nobody said that… I think it was a mistake,” he added.
Trump, along with the rest of America, later questioned how Crooks could have gotten to the roof in the first place.
“How could someone get on that roof?” Trump asked. “And why wasn’t it reported, if people saw him on that roof?”
Trump revealed that security officers were alerted that someone was on the roof with a gun even before he walked on stage, and did not stop him from doing so.
“When the Trump supporters are yelling, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and he’s got a gun’ — that was well before I got on stage. And I would have thought that somebody would have done something about it,” Trump said.
Trump suffered a minor injury from the shooting, but the outcome could have been much worse had he not turned his head slightly at the last minute.
Questions remain as to how Crooks was able to get onto the roof without being stopped by police.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was subpoenaed to testify about the department’s response before a U.S. House of Representatives committee on Monday as she faces calls to resign or be fired.
Meanwhile, questions remain about Crooks’ motive.
He was a registered Republican and had been described by classmates as a staunch conservative, but in 2021 he donated money to a progressive movement.
A review of his phone showed the would-be assassin had searched for information before registering on Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Princess of Wales Kate Middleton.
California psychologist Dr Craig Hands told DailyMail.com that while antidepressants may be linked to homicidal behaviour, major depression is the likely culprit.
They also investigated whether he suffered from major depressive disorder and doctors now say he fits the standard model of a mass shooter.
Crooks was believed to feel disenfranchised and invisible and sought a kind of immortality through his violent actions.
Dr Craig Hands, a clinical psychologist in California, told DailyMail.com: “In the case of the shooter, I can only assume, in many ways, from what I’ve heard, that he fits a common profile.
-In fact, it may be likely, I don’t know if he was depressed, but that could have contributed to his actions.
‘This depression creates isolation… it’s like a kind of burning depression that is associated with internal rage against oneself and against the machine, so to speak. Rage against the world.’
Major depressive disorder is a clinical diagnosis that causes a persistent feeling of deep sadness, hopelessness, loss of interest in activities, low energy, poor or increased appetite, changes in concentration, suicidal thoughts and behavior.
Dr Hands added: ‘Typically, depression consists of self-criticism and anger, self-hatred.
‘I have to underline the term hate, self-hatred, but many times, or occasionally, that hate is projected outwards.’
A 2015 Oxford University study of about 47,000 people in Sweden, both with and without depression, found that those with depression were approximately three times more are more likely than the general population to commit a violent crime, such as homicide, aggravated assault, or robbery.
However, it is not clear whether Crooks had been diagnosed with the disease, which affects around 17 million adults in the United States.
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