Who Was Thomas Matthew Crooks?

• 5:10 p.m. Crooks was first identified as a person of interest
• 5:30 p.m. Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder
• 5:52 p.m. Crooks was spotted on the roof by Secret Service
• 6:02 p.m. Trump takes the stage
• 6:12 p.m. Crooks fires first shots

"While Crooks was making his way to his shooting position, Secret Service agents were listening to radio traffic about a suspicious person police were looking for and heard local law enforcement talking about some sort of confrontation involving police, the sources said."

"Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told ABC News that he was informed by other law enforcement officials that a Butler Township police officer searching for the suspicious person was vaulted onto the AGR building's roof and briefly confronted the gunman, who turned his weapon to the officer, causing him to retreat back down. Shots rang out moments later."

ABC News

 

 Bit by excruciating bit, details are emerging about the Saturday evening shooting in the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump at the Butler, Pennsylvania election campaign rally, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was identified as the shooter and as the FBI is laboriously investigating, while its specialists "continue to analyze his electronic devices". 

It was explained that the shooter's residence and vehicle were searched, and close to a hundred interviews took place, questioning law enforcement personnel, attendees at the rally, along with other witnesses to fine-comb sources for details of interest. Photos and videos shot at the scene are also being thoroughly reviewed.

 

Prior to the Saturday shooting Crooks went to a shooting range where he was a member and there he practised firing. He was known to have gone to Home Depot where he bought a ladder and 50 rounds of ammunition from Allegheny Arms and Gun Works in Bethel Park, Penn. He had with him a rifle bought by his father in 2013. Following his purchases, an hour's drive north took him to the rally site.

 

An "Improvised explosive device" was found on inspection of his car trunk, a Hyundai Sonata. An unidentified official described the device as having been connected to a receiver with wires, and a remote control detonator was in Crooks' possession. "That suggests the gunman may have been planning to set off an explosion remotely, and investigators are considering the theory that he may have been planning a distraction during the shooting."

 

Before Secret Service snipers on a roof neighbouring the one Crooks was crouching on, he was able to get off several shots -- an estimated eight in total, including the first one, that grazed Trump's ear --until he was shot and killed. Those shots fired from the roof killed one person at the rally -- Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old engineer and firefighter -- shot in the head, while two others were critically wounded.

 

Bethel Park is a quiet suburb of Pittsburgh, south of where the Saturday rally took place. Crooks lived there with his parents and he worked at a nursing home. He graduated with an associate's degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania in May. "Like all Americans, we are shocked and saddened by the horrific turn of events that took place", stated the community college.

 

High school yearbook and graduation photos of Thomas Matthew Crooks

 

According to a former classmate who asked to remain anonymous, Crooks was reserved, seldom discussing politics at school and seemed centre-right and moderate. Hearing that Crooks was identified as the gunman, the classmate texted Crooks that he was sorry that someone attempted to impersonate him. When he later saw the photo of Crooks on the roof of the building where he was fatally shot, he understood why he received no text back.

Despite having ample access to Crooks' family and friends, his phone and those of some people he communicated with, investigators find themselves with scant information that might point to a motive for his actions. According to FBI officials, there is no evidence of any ideology that drove Crooks to commit such an act of violence. 

Police block roads around the home of Thomas Matthew Crooks in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, on Monday, as the FBI continues its investigation into the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.    Rebecca Droke/AFP/Getty Images

Paying the Freight for Highlighting Realities

"Though his life-changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact."

"[Our family is grateful for the] audience members who bravely leapt to his defence [and police, doctors] [and] the outpouring of love and support from around the world."

Zafar Rushdie, son updating Salman Rushdie's health condition

Salman Rushdie   David Levenson/Getty

 

Perhaps it was inevitable. He had security personnel on duty for years. There had been an earlier, ailed attempt on his life. His novel "The Satanic Verses" hit a raw nerve in Islam, earning him a fatwa from none other than Iran's original revolutionary Islamist leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. India-born Rushdie was a British citizen and the British government lost no time n mounting protection for their world-famous author. He would eventually be knighted in recognition of his stellar place in the world of celebrity authorship.

When he was attacked by a knife-wielding man identified as 24-year-old Hadi Matar just as he was being introduced as the evening's guest speaker on Saturday in New York at the Chautauqua Institution, he suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and an eye. According to his literary agent, 75-year-old Rushdie is likely to lose the use of the affected eye. But taken off a ventilator, out of a coma, his "condition is heading in the right direction".

 

The man who has been under threat of death by outraged Islamists incited by their leaders to kill Rushdie, has taken necessary measures for security for three decades, with a $3-million bounty on his head. He still reacted with equanimity and a resolve to continue writing and dedicating himself to support of free speech. The nine years he spent under the U.K.'s protective program failed to dampen his personal mission to speaking as he would, writing what he would.

 

Also injured, standing on that stage before Rushdie had the opportunity to begin his lecture, was 73-year-old Henry Reese, co-founder of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum. He suffered a gash to his forehead, bruising and related minor injuries. The evening's discussion was meant to focus on writers' safety and freedom of expression.  

If anyone was a symbol of violent persecution of writing pungent observations heavy on satire, he is that person. His Islam-offending book that earned him the infamous fatwa in 1989 featured a thinly veiled Muhammad in Mahound, a prophet in a pre-Islam city on the Arabian Peninsula. Prostitutes feature in the book whose names reflect those of the Prophet's nine waves. A novel implying that the Koran, Islam's sacred scripture, was written by Muhammad, not divinely scribed.

It's often been said that publicity sells, and it does. Irrespective of the category it falls into; critical or praise-full, publicity good or bad piques the public interest and where books are concerned, will place them high on best seller's lists. The Satanic Verses had long since reached the pinnacle of popularity as reading material, with a frisson of danger.

Indeed, there was and remains danger in threats of death for anyone involved in its publication. Two translators met their deaths in vengeance Islamist attacks. The author of the book might have been the third, but fate has other plans for him, aside from a new book being published. He will now no doubt write of this ordeal for a fascinated public. The Satanic Verses has now once again hit best seller lists. 

 

Rushdie's is the last laugh.

"Just witnessed the horrific assassination attempt on #SalmanRushdie's life. He was stabbed multiple times before attacker was subdued by security," 

"Some intrepid members of audience went on stage. What courage will be expected of us next to defend even the smallest freedoms?"

Author Carl LeVan 

Joshua Goodman/AP

And Over To You, Comrade Capitalist Putin ...

"The Kremlin's mistake was to underestimate Navalny's level of support," 

:[When people saw Navalny's arrest on live TV on his return to Russia on Jan. 17, as well as the online release last week of a documentary about President Putin's alleged corruption], it provided a strong emotional impulse to take to the street."

Russian political observer Andrei Kolesnikov, fellow, Moscow's Carnegie Center  

A still image taken from video footage shows law enforcement officers speaking with Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before leading him away at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Jan. 17. (Reuters)

"I am sick of this government of thieves."

"This is a police state that gives nothing to the people. [Putin] builds palaces for himself."

"What is this?" 

68-year-old pensioner Galina Zolina, Moscow

 

"[The protests are] not a knockout blow to the state. We shouldn't start moving into hyperbole, that this is the beginning of the end of Putinism."

"[It's a] coalition of the fed-up. People have all kinds of reasons to feel unhappy with the way things are going and [Navalny] kind of becomes the catalyst."

"It's hard to maintain the momentum [of the protests] week after week."

"One way or another, the state wants to slowly de-legitimize the protests and make them less appealing, and by outlasting them, make opposition look increasingly pointless." 

Mark Galeotti, London-based Russia analyst, host, podcast In Moscow's Shadows

Russian President Vladimir Putin does a video conference call with university students at a state residence in Zavidovo, Russia, on Monday. (Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters)

"Hypocrites continue to inflate the fake Navalny case to interfere into internal affairs of our country."

"This is a professionally prepared provocation, encouraged by embassies of Western countries."

Russian embassy, U.K., Twitter

 

"That's what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves [accusing demonstrators of placing children at the fore of the protests]." 

"Nothing that is listed there [Black Sea palatial palace] as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

Law enforcement officers stand in front of participants during a rally in support of Navalny in St. Petersburg on Saturday. (REUTERS)

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to university students through a video conference addressing the unrest of unprecedented numbers of protesters in Russian cities, the mass anti-Kremlin protest organizers are "terrorists", and there is no need to investigate -- as Alexei Navalny, returned from Germany to Russia demands -- the president's personal wealth. An issue that is the stuff of urban legends, a conspiracy theory launched by those opposed to Mr. Putin's continued rule, the best president that Russia has ever had and as far as Mr. Putin is concerned, to be the longest-governing.

The issue of a Black Sea palace supposedly owned by Vladimir Putin is nothing but slander, according to the man himself, one that first emerged years ago, and now reborn to slur his reputation. Reputed to have cost a billion dollars and described as "Putin's Palace", the deed to the immense mansion may or may not be in Mr. Putin's strong-box possession, but state funds were apparently diverted in a scheme by his loyal allies to invest him with a palace worthy of his stature, held in trust perhaps for his eventual public ownership.

In 2010, Kolesnikov claimed that a luxurious estate near the Black Sea was for Putin. A Russian website published pictures, including the one above, which it said were of the mansion. The Kremlin denied Putin had anything to do with the building. Reuters is unable to independently verify the authenticity, content, location, source or date of this photograph.

 

Tens of thousands of Russian demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday protesting against the arrest of Alexei Navalny who was determined to return to Russia after  his convalescence in Berlin, recovering from an attempted assassination with the use of the Russian military chemical nerve-agent, Novichok which failed to fatally poison its target. The second time the poison was used for a similar purpose; the first occasion in London targeting another Russian dissident who also recovered as did his daughter, poisoned by default.

For the most part, state-ordered assassinations -- of journalist-critics, political critics, oligarch critics, and any high-profile pests who feel it their right to criticize the Kremlin and Russia's president can be certain that one way or another an attempt will be made on silencing them -- are proven to be successful, whether by drive-by shootings, sharpshooters, poisoning or mysterious disappearances. This was the ultimate challenge by Navalny, to return to Russia and dare the Kremlin/Putin to take additional action.

GRAND DESIGNS: One of the pictures described by a Russian website as showing the mansion dubbed “Putin’s palace.” The Kremlin has denied Putin has anything to do with the building. Reuters

 

Which they speedily did, and Putin's current most-prominent and popular figure of opposition complicating his life now faces trumped-up charges that in a Russian court, may earn him ten years in prison from his current pretrial detention. New mass demonstrations in protest of Mr. Navalny's arrest are scheduled for the coming weekend, similar to Saturday's protest where over 3,000 people were detained. There were relatively restrained clashes by protesters against baton-wielding police with no serious injuries reported.

 

Mr. Putin had in his address to the students on Monday, referred to authorities' claims the opposition had persuaded minors to become part of the rallies, remarking that young people had no place in such situations, nor should they be manipulated for the opposition's political ends. As a master manipulator speaking to young people, the president obviously knows whereof he speaks. An investigation into the claims failed to turn up evidence of the presence of young people in the chanting, determined protest crowd.

 

Mr. Navalny and his political group opposing ongoing rule by Mr. Putin, brought even wider global and internal focus to the situation when they released a video just hours after Mr. Navalny's arrest, pointedly accusing the president of amassing wealth for himself, draining the country's treasury. The immense, sprawling Black Sea mansion was highlighted as an opulent manifestation of the grandiloquent role Mr. Putin sees for himself as a modern-day Czar of the Russian Federation.  

 

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is set to visit Moscow in the coming month to impress on the Kremlin that by arresting and imprisoning the opposition leader, Russia resembles nothing less than a dictatorship, and to urge the Russian authorities to reconsider this action in light of the harm they do themselves on the international stage. An EU meeting of European foreign ministers had reached the conclusion that a friendly visit and friendly advice to Russia might turn the situation around.

"The council considered it completely unacceptable and condemned mass detentions and police brutality over the weekend."

"We call on Russia for the release of Mr. Navalny."

Joseph Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief 

Riot police drag away a protester in Moscow on Saturday. More than 1,400 people were arrested in the capital alone, with 3,700 arrests reported nationwide. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)