Authorities identified the gunman as a 20-year-old man from Bethel Park, Pa., a town about an hour’s drive from the site of the shooting.
A spectator was also killed at the rally in Pennsylvania, the Secret Service said. Former President Donald J. Trump said in a post online that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part” of his ear.
Crooks used a semiautomatic rifle, three senior U.S. law enforcement officials said, based on what was found at the scene.
Investigators are looking into whether the gun used by the shooter belonged to his dad and had been purchased legally, according to two senior law enforcement officials.
Crooks is believed to have fired eight shots before he was taken down, said an official citing preliminary findings.
Multiple suspicious canisters or containers were found in Crooks’ vehicle but it’s unclear if they were functional as incendiary or explosive devices, two officials said.
Crooks’ family is cooperating with investigators, but his motive remains unclear, according to a senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the matter.
Bethel Park is a predominantly white, relatively well-to-do city in the southern reaches of greater Pittsburgh. The site of the rally, Butler, is about an hour’s drive north of Pittsburgh.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022.
He was among more than a dozen students who received a National Math & Science Initiative Star Award that year, according to a story in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
A high school classmate, Jason Kohler, 21, said Crooks was a “loner” who was “bullied so much in high school.”
Crooks would regularly wear hunting outfits and was made fun of for the way he dressed, Kohler said.
