Fox News has learned that Thomas Matthew Crooks threatened an attack online days before he killed one person and hurt others at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Crooks climbed onto a roof and opened fire, hitting former President Donald Trump.
U.S. senators were briefed by the Secret Service and the FBI on July 17 that Crooks, 20, posted a threatening message on the game website “Steam” a few days before the July 13 attempted murder in Butler, Pennsylvania. Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News reported on this.
The authorities say Crooks wrote: “July 13 will be my premiere, watch as it unfolds.”
The famous platform “Steam” is where tens of millions of gamers buy games and talk to each other. The finding was made while investigators were still looking through Crooks’ cell phones, laptops, and other tech items.
Investigators looked through the laptop and found searches in July for Trump, Biden, the July 13 Trump rally, and when is the DNC conference. This is what the top security officials in the US told the senators on Wednesday.
The FBI thinks it’s important that the laptop didn’t show any signs of a specific viewpoint. Also, senators who spoke to Fox News after the meeting said that Crooks wasn’t heard talking about politics in interviews.
They also found out that the subject had two cell phones. Both the main phone and a remote emitter were found at the scene.
Just 27 people were saved on a second cell phone that was found in the house. The senators were told that the FBI was going to find those people and talk to them.
This happened just hours after it was revealed that Crooks’ parents called the police on Saturday, hours before the attempted murder.
A source told Fox News that the would-be killer’s parents told cops that Crooks was missing and that they were worried about his well-being.
There was still no word on whether they knew he had his father’s AR-15 gun with him.
There is no information from the police about what they did after being called.
