Who Shot Trump in the Ear? The Shooter, Motive, and Roof Access

The person who shot Donald Trump in the ear was Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He opened fire from a rooftop during Trump’s campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, grazing Trump’s upper right ear, killing one spectator, and critically wounding two others. Secret Service counter-snipers shot and killed Crooks within about a minute of his first shot. The FBI later concluded he acted alone and that investigators were unable to identify any motive.¹

Who Thomas Matthew Crooks Was

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022 and had just earned an associate degree in engineering science with high honors from the Community College of Allegheny County. He worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing home. Classmates described him as quiet and isolated. He had been accepted to the University of Pittsburgh but declined, planning instead to attend Robert Morris University that fall.²

His parents, Matthew and Mary Crooks, are both licensed professional counselors in Pennsylvania. His father is a registered Libertarian; his mother a registered Democrat. Crooks himself was a registered Republican, but at 17 he had donated $15 to a progressive political group on Inauguration Day 2021.³ Neighbors recalled the family home displaying pro-Trump signage at one point.⁴

His father called 911 nearly five hours after the shooting to report his son missing, telling the dispatcher that Thomas had left the house around 1:45 p.m. and wasn’t answering texts, which was “totally not like him.”⁵ The FBI determined Crooks was not previously known to the bureau.⁶

How He Prepared

Crooks joined the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club in August 2023 and visited the range 43 times before the attack. Twenty of those visits occurred in his first four months as a member, and by 2024 he focused almost exclusively on rifle practice. His last range visit was the day before the shooting.⁷

He visited the Butler County fairgrounds at least once beforehand. On the day of the rally, he flew a small drone near the site between roughly 3:50 and 4:00 p.m.⁸ The rifle he used, a DPMS Panther Arms A-15 chambered in 5.56mm, belonged to his father and had been purchased legally.⁹ Investigators also recovered an improvised explosive device from his car. His search history going back to 2019 showed he had researched how to make a bomb from fertilizer and how remote detonators work.¹⁰

What Happened at the Rally

Trump took the stage around 6:05 p.m. and was about eight minutes into his speech when gunfire erupted. He had turned his head toward a chart on display when the first shots rang out. Trump later said he heard a “whizzing sound” and felt a bullet “piercing the upper part of my right ear.”⁸

Crooks fired as many as eight rounds from an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle from a rooftop roughly 200 yards from the stage.¹¹ Within roughly a minute of his first shot, Secret Service counter-snipers returned fire and killed him. Agents rushed Trump off the stage, and as they moved him toward the motorcade he raised his fist and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to the crowd.

Trump was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital, where he underwent a CT scan and was released the same evening.¹² Representative Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician who treated Trump afterward, described a 2-centimeter gunshot wound to the cartilage of the right ear with “significant bleeding” and “marked swelling.” The bullet passed less than a quarter of an inch from entering Trump’s head. No sutures were required.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified on July 24 that Trump might have been struck by “shrapnel,” but two days later the FBI clarified that “what struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.”¹³

Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief from Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed while shielding his family from the gunfire.¹⁴ Two other spectators, David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, were critically injured but later stabilized.¹⁵

Why He Did It

The FBI concluded in November 2025 that there was “no motive” for the attack and “no reason for it.”¹ Crooks’ phone showed he had searched for symptoms of depressive disorder and for images of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.² His father acknowledged that mental health problems ran in the family, and Crooks exhibited behavioral changes in the summer of 2024, including searching online for “major depressive disorder” and “depression crisis.”¹⁶ The FBI found no evidence of co-conspirators.⁶

How He Got on the Roof

Crooks positioned himself on the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building complex, which sat just outside the Secret Service’s secured perimeter but gave him a clear, elevated line of sight to the stage. He climbed up using an air conditioning unit on the side of the building.⁹ Multiple investigations later concluded that the failure to secure that building was the central breakdown that made the shooting possible.

Local law enforcement had flagged the AGR building as a vulnerability, but the Secret Service provided unclear guidance about which agency was responsible for securing it. Local sniper teams stationed inside the building believed the exterior and rooftop were being covered by the Secret Service; the Secret Service believed local officers had it handled.¹⁷

A Pennsylvania State Police sergeant in the Secret Service security room identified a suspicious individual with a rangefinder roughly 25 to 27 minutes before the shooting and reported that the individual was on the roof about two minutes before shots were fired. That information never reached Trump’s protective detail or the agents who could have kept him from taking the stage.¹¹ A local officer physically confronted Crooks on the roof moments before the shooting, but Crooks pointed his rifle at the officer, who dropped back down. Roughly 25 to 30 seconds later, Crooks began firing.

The Secret Service’s counter-drone equipment had also malfunctioned and was not operational until after 5:00 p.m., missing the window when Crooks flew his drone hours earlier. The agent operating that equipment had received about one hour of training.¹⁸ Requests from the Trump campaign for additional security resources had been denied or left unfulfilled by Secret Service headquarters.

What Happened After

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on July 23, 2024, ten days after the shooting, following a six-hour House Oversight Committee hearing in which she faced bipartisan demands for answers. In her resignation letter, Cheatle wrote, “As your director, I take full responsibility for the security lapse,” calling it “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.”¹⁹ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas named Ronald Rowe, a 24-year veteran and deputy director, as acting director.²⁰ The Senate later found that Cheatle had given false testimony to Congress when she stated that no asset requests for the Butler rally had been denied.²¹

A bipartisan House task force released its 180-page final report on December 5, 2024, concluding the shooting was “preventable and should not have happened” and resulted from “failures in planning, execution, and leadership.”²² The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released its own report on July 13, 2025, the one-year anniversary, characterizing the event as “a cascade of preventable failures.” It found that the Secret Service denied or left unfulfilled at least ten requests for additional resources, failed to share credible intelligence about threats to Trump with the agents at Butler, and demonstrated a “severe lack of coordination” with state and local law enforcement.²¹ A separate investigation by Senator Grassley found that the Secret Service had received classified threat intelligence regarding Trump ten days before the rally but failed to relay it to federal and local partners on the ground.¹⁸

No Secret Service personnel were fired. Six individuals, from supervisory to line-agent level, received suspensions without pay lasting between 10 and 42 days, and in two cases the punishment was reduced from what had originally been recommended. Upon returning, the suspended agents were moved to restricted or non-operational roles.²³ The security room agent who failed to relay warnings about Crooks was cleared by an internal review and retired in June 2025.²⁴ The Senate committee concluded these actions were “far too weak to match the severity of the failures.”

In 2026, the two wounded survivors, James Copenhaver and David Dutch, filed federal lawsuits against the United States alleging negligence by the Secret Service. Copenhaver was shot twice, sustaining injuries to his abdomen, spine, and left arm. Dutch suffered injuries described in the filing as “severe, serious, permanent and grievous.” Each is seeking at least $150,000 in damages, citing the congressional findings about security failures at the AGR building.²⁵ The litigation remains pending.²⁶

Congress passed the Enhanced Presidential Security Act of 2024, signed into law on October 1, 2024, requiring identical protection standards for presidents, vice presidents, and major candidates. As of July 2025, the Secret Service reported implementing 21 of 46 congressional recommendations, with 16 more in progress, including a new Aviation and Airspace Security division for drone monitoring and countermeasures, revised communication protocols with local law enforcement, a single point of accountability for approving security plans at each event, and a threat-based methodology for allocating resources.²⁷

1
The Hill. FBI Conclusion on Trump Assassination Attempt Probe
2
BBC News. Thomas Matthew Crooks: What We Know About the Trump Rally Shooter
3
U.S. House Oversight Committee. Committee Document on Thomas Matthew Crooks
4
Fox 32 Chicago. Trump Shooter’s Parents Called Police Hours Before Assassination Attempt
5
ABC News. Trump Assassin’s Father Called 911 Hours After Shooting
6
FBI. Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
7
ABC News. Suspected Trump Rally Shooter Visited Gun Range Dozens of Times
8
ABC News. Timeline: How the Trump Assassination Attempt Unfolded
9
FBI. Butler Investigation Photos
10
ABC 7 Chicago. FBI Gives Update on Motive Mystery in Trump Assassination Attempt
11
Lawfare. How the Secret Service Failed to Prevent a Trump Assassination Attempt
12
Politico. Trump Shooting Doctor Letter
13
Time. Trump Ear Injury Shooting Details
14
CBS News. Secret Service Failures: Trump Rally Shooting, Comperatore Family
15
Pennsylvania State Police. Pennsylvania State Police Identify Victims Shot During Attempted Assassination
16
The New York Times. Thomas Crooks: Trump Shooter at Butler Rally
17
U.S. House Task Force. Final Report of the Bipartisan Task Force
18
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley Report on Secret Service Failures
19
BBC News. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Resigns
20
CNBC. Secret Service Director Resigns After Trump Shooting
21
Senate HSGAC. Chairman Rand Paul Releases Final Report on Secret Service Failures
22
NBC News. House Task Force Releases Final Report on Trump Assassination Attempt
23
CBS News. Trump Assassination Attempt: Secret Service Suspensions
24
Senate HSGAC. HSGAC Final Report
25
Politico. Trump Butler Shooting Lawsuit
26
CBS News. Men Shot During Butler Trump Rally Sue United States
27
U.S. Secret Service. One-Year Update Following July 13, 2024 Attempted Assassination