Thomas Crooks, the man behind the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, had been exhibiting disturbing and erratic behavior long before the incident. Reports indicate he was seen conversing with imaginary figures and dancing alone in his bedroom. In the weeks leading up to the July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, he had even looked up details related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
A comprehensive report from the New York Times compiled information from law enforcement interviews, online activity, and records from Crooks’ past, painting a troubling picture of his deteriorating mental state in the year before the attempted assassination.
Following the attack, Crooks’ father told federal authorities that his son’s mental well-being had started to unravel nearly a year prior to the shooting.
The father, who acknowledged mental health issues in the family, described bizarre behavior, including his son speaking to himself and dancing around his room late at night.
Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a member of the House task force investigating the shooting, shared that Crooks appeared to be “having conversations with someone that wasn’t there” in the period leading up to the assassination attempt.
“There was a mysteriousness to Thomas Crooks’ descent into madness,” Higgins noted, saying the details emerged during his investigation.
Seven days before the attack, Crooks’s internet activity took a dark turn, with searches that included specifics of John F. Kennedy’s killing in 1963.
“How far was Oswald from Kennedy?” he typed, according to the Times.
Crooks made those inquiries shortly before he climbed onto an unsecured rooftop overlooking Trump’s rally on July 13 and began firing shots.
He managed to hit Trump in the ear and fatally struck an attendee before being shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper positioned nearby.
When law enforcement reached the rooftop, they found Crooks’ lifeless body soaked in blood.
{Matzav.com}