Neighbor Reveals Big Change to Crooks' Home Before Shooting

Another piece of the puzzle as to why Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday may have come to light.

Kelly Little, a neighbor of the Crooks family in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, told a reporter from Pittsburgh’s WPXI that until recently, there were pro-Trump signs in their yard.

“There absolutely was MAGA supporting things for a while,” she said.

Crooks, 20, lived in the home with his parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks.

This revelation — along with Fox News reporting Wednesday that Crooks’ parents were looking for him Saturday in the hours leading up to the rally shooting and eventually called authorities — may indicate that they knew he could be a threat to Trump or his supporters at the event.

Perhaps they had removed the yard signs to ease their son's feelings.

His disappearance, combined with the father’s missing AR-15, raised a red flag for the parents.

As Fox News host Harris Faulkner pointed out, we don’t know the exact nature of their concern. Was it that he might cause harm in general or specifically at the Trump event?

CNN reported that Saturday would have typically been a workday for Thomas, but he told his boss he needed the day off because he had “something to do.”

“By 3 p.m. on Saturday, Thomas Matthew Crooks was at the security screening area for the Trump rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. He first aroused suspicion when he passed through the magnetometers carrying a rangefinder, which looks similar to a small pair of binoculars and is used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances when setting up a long-range shot,” according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

“The rangefinder would not have prevented Crooks from getting through the security screening point, but it did attract the attention of security personnel who kept an eye on him until he left the secure area,” CNN added.

Rally attendees later spotted him on the roof from which he would open fire just minutes later at 6:11 p.m.

Crooks’ motive remains a mystery.

Though he was a registered Republican, he had donated $15 to Act Blue earmarked for the “Progressive Turnout Project” on the day of President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, according to Axios.

Crooks was 17 at the time he made the contribution.

The New York Post reported Wednesday that Matthew Crooks, who is a registered Libertarian, had been profiled by the Trump campaign in 2016 as a potential backer due to his support for the Second Amendment.

Mary Crooks is a Democrat.

All these facts are pieces of a puzzle that has not yet been solved, but one possible scenario is that the parents knew their son was anti-Trump, perhaps strongly enough that he did not want MAGA signs in their yard.

He then takes off work the day of the rally and takes an AR-15 from the home.

The parents put two and two together and realize their son might try to kill the former president at the rally.