BETHEL PARK, Pennsylvania – Conversations by The Pennsylvania Daily Star with around two dozen neighbors near the house where Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump, lived painted a picture of a family that mostly keeps to itself and a young man who had little interaction with the neighborhood.
Crooks lived on Milford Lane in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, in a modest, hilly, middle-class neighborhood with mostly single-story houses built in the 1950s.
On Monday, the section of Milford Lane in front of the Crooks’ house remained blocked by law enforcement. But police had already opened up sections of the neighborhood that it had closed on Saturday after the shooting, according to multiple neighbors.
Various yard signs with political and social messages revealed an ideologically diverse, if not divided, community.
Some neighbors revealed fatigue at the sudden interest in their neighborhood, while others discussed the deceased attempted assassin and his family more openly.
“I don’t know them, and I wish you all would just leave us alone,” snapped a woman who lives about a block from the Crooks.
“He was mostly an introvert; he kind of kept to himself,” said a girl who looked to be in high school. Her father appeared and immediately waved off reporters.
“We’re through,” he barked. “We’ve had it. We’ve got nothing more to say.”
A woman with a Trump sign in her yard said she and her daughter who lived next door didn’t know the Crooks and never had any interaction with them.
A middle-aged man, who identified himself as a musician but declined to provide his name, said he knew the families in the first two houses on Milford Lane but did not know the family in the third, the Crooks’ residence.
“I grew up in a neighborhood like this,” he said. “Back then, everyone in the neighborhood knew each other. Nowadays, you can live in a neighborhood like this and know almost nobody.”
He said he knew that a boy lived in the third house because he saw him walking down the street at times.
The man’s neighbor said she also saw Crooks walking alone in the neighborhood often but never had any interaction with him. She too said she didn’t know Crooks’ parents or family and only remembers seeing him alone.
A third neighbor corroborated that Crooks often walked alone along Milford Drive, which leads to Library Road, Bethel Park’s main artery.
A woman who said she didn’t know the family asked her father inside if he knew the Crooks. He too came out and confirmed that he did not.
“Wait a minute,” his daughter remembered. “My cousin’s son went to school with Thomas.”
She called her cousin, who called her Michael at work. The woman relayed that her cousin said that Michael told her he had already spoken to the media. He said he knew Thomas in elementary school but didn’t know him well in high school.
Monday morning, Pittsburgh Bureau of Federal Investigation agents went door to door asking neighbors for information. According to the New York Post, they too found few neighbors with knowledge or willingness to divulge.
“They asked if I knew them or if I’d seen anything out of the ordinary,” a neighbor told The Post. “I didn’t have any great answers for them.”
Kelly Little, who’s lived across the street from the Crooks since 2018, in a section of Milford Lane police had barricaded, told the agents that she didn’t know Thomas had an older sister named Katherine.
“I had no idea she existed,” Little told the Post.
A man expressed shock to The Star that something like this could come out of his neighborhood.
“Look at this place,” he said, pointing toward the shaded street. “It’s peaceful. It’s quiet. At least he didn’t do any shooting here. He went off to another town to do it.”
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Jacob Grandstaff is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tennessee. Follow on X @JDGrandstaff.
Photos by Jacob Grandstaff.
