Just over a week after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, nearly assassinating former President Trump and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore, the 20-year-old’s neighbors are grappling with the reality of the “evil’ that lurked down the street.
“That’s sheer fear. If [Trump] had his head turned, he would’ve had his brains blown out, and that was manufactured around the corner from my house,” said a neighbor who lives about the same distance from the Crooks home that the shooter was from the president when Crooks opened fire.
“There was such evil around the corner,” she said Tuesday. “We’re always going to have a scar from what happened and how close to us [it was].”
Another woman who regularly runs through the neighborhood said she passed Crooks in their quiet neighborhood several times over the summer.
Despite her attempts to “look over and smile and say hello,” he would “look up as though nobody had been passing him.”
That woman said she was shocked when she heard the news of the shooting just 40 minutes away from her house.
Things got even more “surreal” when she realized the perpetrator lived far closer to home than she thought.
“When I first thought about the shooter being in Butler, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s in my backyard.’ It ended up being closer. All of a sudden, it’s a neighbor,” she said.
Another woman who regularly runs through the neighborhood said she passed Crooks in their quiet neighborhood several times over the summer.
Despite her attempts to “look over and smile and say hello,” he would “look up as though nobody had been passing him.”
That woman said she was shocked when she heard the news of the shooting just 40 minutes away from her house. Things got even more “surreal” when she realized the perpetrator lived far closer to home than she thought.
“When I first thought about the shooter being in Butler, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s in my backyard.’ It ended up being closer.
All of a sudden, it’s a neighbor,” she said.
