The suburban Pittsburgh town of Bethel Park , Pennsylvania, is asking itself all the same questions residents of Belleville and the metro-east were asking themselves seven years ago.
What is it that pushed one of their own over the edge and on a path toward violence?
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are still investigating what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to carry his father’s AR-style rifle to the roof of a steel building near a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania and open fire on former President Donald Trump.
One of his shots “pierced” Trump’s ear, the former president said. Another hit and killed Pennsylvania firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, who was shielding his family from the bullets, the Associated Press reported.
Crooks, 20, was a registered Republican who also donated $15 to a liberal cause. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , high school classmates described him as intelligent and friendly, but with few friends and the target of bullies. Coworkers at the nursing home where he worked helping to prepare meals expressed only surprise and sadness in his involvement.
Crooks’ social media accounts offer no clues as to what he felt or how he thought. There were no red flags – no history of mental illness, no police record, no reason to believe him to be a threat, the Associated Press reported.
There is no questioning, however, what drove James T. Hodgkinson, 66, to travel from Belleville to Alexandria, Virginia on June 14, 2017 and spray members of the U.S. Congress, who were practicing for a charity baseball game, with 60 rounds of gunfire. He didn’t shoot until he first verified that the congressmen on the field were Republicans.
Those injured included House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana., who underwent multiple surgeries after a single bullet traveled through his hip and into internal organs. He returned to Congress three months later to a standing ovation.
Capitol Police Special Agent Crystal Griner, lobbyists Matt Mika and Zack Barth and a staffer for Rep. Roger Williams of Texas also were injured in the shooting.
Hodgkinson was well known to readers of the Belleville News-Democrat’s letters to the editor. He sent copious letters railing against Republican politicians, media personalities, and other right-leaning letter writers. In a reply to one them, he said “I have never said life sucks, only the policies of the Republicans.”
He also laid bare his political attitudes in social media, with memberships to multiple anti-GOP groups on Facebook, including those called “ “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans,” “Expose Republican Fraud, and “Terminate the Republican Party.”
Still, none of Hodgkinson’s letters or social media posts included threats of violence. And, while he was known to have a quick temper, no one saw his actions in June of 2017 coming.
Like Crooks, Hodgkinson was killed by return fire from law enforcement at the scene of the shooting.
Here’s a look back at the BND’s coverage of Hodgkinson and the Congressional shooting:
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