Would-be Donald Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks had a good aim, but was “pure evil” according to a man who took a shooting course alongside him.
Air Force veteran Bill Jenkins, 62, was on the range at Keystone Shooting Centre in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, with Crooks less than a month before he managed to get off eight shots at the Republican presidential nominee as he spoke at a rally, grazing his ear.
“I was sitting next to real evil there, it really scares me … I haven’t been able to sleep thinking about it,” Jenkins, a computer programmer, told The Sun.
“This guy killed a man with a wife and kids and almost plunged the country into chaos by killing Donald Trump.”
One man was killed and two others injured by 20-year-old loner Crooks’ bullets in the seconds before Secret Service snipers took him out.
Jenkins, who has been questioned by the FBI over his eerie encounter with Crooks, recalled how they took an intermediate handgun course together at the range in Cranberry, Pa. — about a 30-minute drive from Butler, where the shooting took place on July 13.
The course claims to help “improve accuracy and distance through stance, grip and follow through,” according to its website and, alongside the instructor, Jenkins and Crooks were the only two taking it that day.
Crooks was dressed in casual attire and brought his own 9mm handgun to the class, according to Jenkins.
“The course went on for three hours and I could see this kid was confident with guns. When we went to the range he started shooting straight away,” Jenkins told the outlet. “It seemed like he had experience with weapons.”
His first impression was that Crooks seemed like a “nice kid,” but noted he was quiet.
High school classmates of the would-be assassin have since publicly discussed how Crooks was interested in politics, describing him as “smug and arrogant” about it.
Others described how he had been bullied as well as his bad hygiene. Another former classmate, Jameson Myers, who went to elementary and high school with Crooks, claimed he had been cut from the rifle club because he was a terrible shot.
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But Jenkins had a different takeaway about Crooks’ shooting skills during their time on the June 22 course.
“I noticed on his target at ten yards he blew a big hole right through the centrepiece,” Jenkins recounted to The Sun. “I congratulated him on how good he’d done and he just laughed.”
At one point Jenkins and the instructor broached politics and talked about Trump, riffing about his successes on the economy, border, energy policy, and more.
“It turns out the instructor and I are Trump supporters,” Jenkins said. “We talked about how our country was good under Trump.”
“I noticed at the time that the kid wasn’t saying anything one way or another but I could see him smirking. He had a little smile,” Jenkins said. “Looking back, I think he was biting his tongue. Nothing we discussed will have sat well with him.”
“It’s crossed my mind — did that conversation help push him over the edge? It freaks me out a little because a person has died,” he went on.
On the day of his assassination attempt, Crooks took his father’s AR-style rifle and crawled across the roof of a shed and perched in a firing position just under 150 years away from where Trump, 78, was speaking.
The man who was killed, Corey Comperatore, was a volunteer firefighter. The two others who were shot, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were both severely wounded. One bullet clipped Trump’s right ear and came very close to killing him.
“The bullet passed, coming less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a former White House doctor said.
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump reflected during his address to the Republican National Convention last Thursday.
“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.”
Trump also paid tribute to Comperatore, by displaying his fire-fighter gear onstage, kissing it, and calling for a moment of silence.
Law enforcement, led by the FBI, are still trying to ascertain a clearer motive behind Crooks’ attack.
Initially, Jenkins didn’t recognize Crooks when images of the suspect began getting printed and blanketed across TVs across the country.
“It was only when the Pittsburgh field office of the FBI called me on Tuesday and asked me about the class at Keystone that I found out,” he told The Sun.
“He tried to plunge the country into chaos. Maybe that’s what his motive was — he wanted to start a real catastrophe in this country.”