Midnight food runs and blackout blinds - Life a year later for reclusive parents of Trump's would-be assassin

Daily Mail​

14 hours ago

The parents of Matthew Crooks have remained stubbornly silent and hunkered down a year on from their son's attempted assassination of Donald Trump last July.
Matthew and Mary Crooks refuse to speak about their son's actions on July 13, 2024, when DailyMail.com knocked on their door this week.
Blackout blinds line every window of their modest brick home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and cameras cover every angle to spot intruders.
Crooks was 20 when he fired on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, striking the president's ear and killing retired firefighter Corey Comperatore before being shot dead by a law enforcement sniper.
Since then his family are barely seen by neighbors, with many assuming they had moved from the leafy area.
His sister Katherine, 24, a janitor, has been spotted leaving her apartment less than a mile from her parents' home.
But her parents have essentially become recluses, the only sign that the home is still lived in is the vehicle on the driveway moving, though neighbors can't recall the last time this happened.
Crooks's father even resorted to buying groceries at 3am in a bid to avoid prying eyes, not keeping to a regular routine.
Both he and his wife, who is visually impaired, had previously worked as social workers since 2002.
But DailyMail.com can reveal that their son's high profile assassination attempt has resulted in neither renewing their licenses, which expired in February of this year.
One neighbor told DailyMail.com they assumed the family had moved, adding: 'We haven't seen anyone coming or going for quite a while.
'Most of us thought they had moved on or are still keeping to themselves.'
His family's silence is just one of the puzzle pieces surrounding the attack, with the FBI still unable to point to a solid motive for why the mild-mannered student targeted Trump that day.
Federal profilers have speculated he may simply have wanted to commit a mass shooting and found a convenient target for his dark fantasy in the timing and proximity of Trump's rally, held just 40 miles from where he lived with his parents.
In April, Crooks searched websites for information on major depressive disorder and depressive crisis treatment. He left no manifesto or explanation for the shooting.
According to CNN, Crooks's parents had attempted to reach their son when they could not find him earlier that day, but he did not respond.
They then called law enforcement to tell them that their son was missing. It is not known whether they were aware that he was armed.
Since the attack investigators have focused on Crooks's online activity in the months and days leading up to it in a bid to gain some sense of his state of mind.
Intriguingly it has emerged that he searched online for information on Michigan mass-shooter Ethan Crumbley and his parents.
Crooks left home on the day of the rally armed with an AR-15 style rifle that was bought legally by his father in 2013 and transferred to him in 2023.
He was an enthusiastic member of Clairton Sportsmen's Club, which he visited the day before the incident to practice.
It offers high powered rifle benches with targets up to 187 yards - roughly the distance crooks was from Trump when he shot him.
Immediately after the attack the FBI removed 14 firearms from the small family home as well as explosives, a second cellphone, a laptop and a hard drive.
In addition to the arsenal recovered from his home investigators recovered rudimentary explosive devices from Crooks's car, a bulletproof vest, additional magazines – bought both online and the previous day from Allegheny Arms & Gun Works – and a drone.
Another mystery is why the FBI allowed his body to be released so swiftly after the shooting.
While Crooks body was cremated just 10 days after the shooting, it is unclear exactly what the family have done with his remains.
There is no plaque or obvious burial spot at the family's plot of land in Mount Royal Cemetery, Glenshaw, which is home to three generations of Crooks.
His great grandfather, great grandmother, grandparents and uncle are all buried in the same area, along with other members of the family dating back to 1929.
Crooks was 'neutralized' by a Secret Service sniper 26 seconds after he first shot.
By then he had already fired eight bullets. He hit Trump, 78, in a grazing shot to his right ear, and struck retired fire chief Comperatore, 50, in the head, killing him.
He grievously wounded audience members James Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57, who suffered 'life altering' injuries as a result of the attack.
It comes as the Secret Service suspended six agents over failures during the attack, nearly a year later.
Myosoty Perez was one of six agents suspended for between 10 and 42 days.
She was sent to the location of the rally ahead of time and was specifically tasked with helping to secure the surroundings, the New York Post revealed.
Another agent who helped to coordinate security for the rally was also reportedly suspended, along with four people from the Pittsburgh field office.
The final suspension was reportedly an agent on the counter-sniper team.
A U.S. Secret Service report released just days before the 2024 election confirmed that 'multiple operational and communications gaps preceded the July 13 attempted assassination.'
The Secret Service also described some of the gaps as 'deficiency of established command and control, lapses in communication, and a lack of diligence by agency personnel,' while also noting that 'the accountability process [was] underway.'
Dan Bongino - who now serves as Deputy Director of the FBI and formerly spent 11 years as a Secret Service agent - said last year that Butler was an 'apocalyptic security failure' and called for a full house-cleaning of the upper leadership ranks in the Secret Service D.C. headquarters.
But in the aftermath, the agency was hounded with questions about security failures and Director Kimberly Cheatle was forced to resign.
Now it has emerged that six agents have since been suspended for their actions that day, ABC News confirmed. They range from supervisors to line agents.
'We are laser focused on fixing the root cause of the problem,' Matt Quinn, the Secret Service deputy director, told CBS.
All of the agents have now been suspended according to federally-mandated procedures, Quinn said.
He also noted that the Secret Service has introduced a new fleet of military-grade drones and set up new mobile command posts that allow agents to communicate over radio directly with local law enforcement - which was widely seen as one of the major issues with the Secret Service's response to the shooting.
Witnesses have explained that having multiple command stations during the July event led to confusion and a scattered response.
Scathing: Dan Bongino (pictured with Trump) - who now serves as Deputy Director of the FBI and formerly spent 11 years as a Secret Service agent - said last year that Butler was an 'apocalyptic security failure'
A damning 180-page report released by a House of Representatives task force in December even concluded that the shooting was 'preventable and should not have happened.'
It noted that Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe testified that the agency had been operating under the assumption that local law enforcement was going to secure the AGR complex, from where Crooks fired eight shots.
The report also included a firsthand account from a Butler cop who spotted Crooks and yelled out that he has a gun - though there is no evidence to suggest the message reached the Secret Service security detail surrounding Trump before Crooks began firing.
It concluded that federal, state and local law enforcement officers 'could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments as his behavior became increasingly suspicious.'