Thomas Matthew Crooks’ school district has denied a number of widely circulated claims about the school years of the 20-year-old suspected gunman in last week’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper after opening fire on Trump from a nearby roof with a rifle, grazing Trump’s ear, and killing local firefighter Corey Comperatore. Two other attendees were also seriously injured.
His motive and political affiliation remains unclear.
In a statement posted on Saturday, Bethel Park School District denied that Crooks was bullied, as had been previously reported by his classmates.
“There is a painful misconception that Thomas Crooks was relentlessly bullied in school, which may have led to the assassination attempt on former President Trump,” the school district wrote.
“According to our records, Mr. Crooks excelled academically, regularly attended school, and had no disciplinary incidents, including those related to bullying or threats.”
The school district also clarified reports that Crooks was rejected by the high school rifle team and, according to classmates, “shot terrible” and was “asked not to come back [to tryouts] because how bad of a shot he was.”
“Thomas Crooks was never a member of the school’s rifle team and we have no record of him trying out,” the school district wrote. “The coach does not recall meeting him. However, it is possible that Crooks informally attended a practice, took a shot, and never returned. We don’t have any record of that happening.”
The district also dispelled a rumor, which was reported by British tabloid The Daily Mail on Thursday, that Crooks had threatened to ‘shoot up’ the school. Classmate Vincent Taormina said he made the threat in 2019.
“We had like this anonymous place you could post things or tell on someone on our computers at school and he posted something like ‘Don’t come to school tomorrow,’ and something else that made it sound like he’d put bombs in the cafeteria bathrooms,” he said.
But the district dismissed this claim outright, calling it false.
“In 2019, there was an unfortunate incident involving threats made by a different student against specific school administrators,” it wrote. “That incident was thoroughly investigated and quickly addressed, and the student involved received appropriate discipline. It had no connection whatsoever to Thomas Crooks.”
The school district said that it would be “wildly irresponsible” for it to speculate on Crooks’ mental state in the two years after he left school, and that, as a student, he was known as a “quiet, bright young man who generally got along with his teachers and classmates.”
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