As it happened: Former US president Donald Trump injured in Pennsylvania shooting

David Estcourt here closing our blog on this historic day, as the international community rallies around the US to reject political violence. Angus Dalton and Ashleigh McMillan helmed our coverage earlier in the day.

Summarising the day’s events:

• Former president Donald Trump was left bloodied after gunshots rang out at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
• The incident is being investigated as an assassination attempt.
• The shooter is dead, along with one male spectator. Another two men who attended the rally are in a critical condition.
• Trump said a bullet pierced his right ear. He was swarmed by the Secret Service, ushered to a motorcade and taken to a medical centre.
• The Secret Service said the shooter fired shots from an elevated position, which according to witnesses was the roof of a nearby building. Authorities have seized an assault rifle from the scene.
• The FBI has identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, report Reuters, AP and the New York Times.
• No official motive for the shooting has been announced.
• Trump’s campaign said he was “fine” and still planned to attend the Republican National Convention on Monday, local time, where it is expected his party will nominate him as their presidential candidate.
• President Joe Biden, who has spoken to Trump, said there’s “no place in America for this kind of violence”.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for unity and calm and warned against misinformation following the incident.
• It is the first shooting of a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in March 1981.

Our coverage will continue on Monday.

Details have begun to emerge about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man the FBI believes fired on former president Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.

The New York Times is reporting the following:

• Searches of Pennsylvania’s public court records indicate that Crooks did not have a criminal history, and authorities said they had not yet identified a motive;
• Voter registration information showed Crooks was registered as a Republican, but that he also donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, which encourages Democrat voter participation, in January 2021;
• Law enforcement officials had closed down all roads leading towards the home of the suspect’s family in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh, early on Sunday morning local time. The home is about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally in Butler;
• Relatives contacted by reporters did not respond to messages seeking comment;
• The Secret Service says Crooks was fatally wounded after he fired from “an elevated position” outside the rally venue where Trump was speaking;
• Officials say they recovered an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle near the body of the man they believe was the gunman, two law enforcement officials told The New York Times;
• Videos posted online and the local press indicated Crooks graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School;
• According to The Tribune-Review in western Pennsylvania, the school has about 1400 students and Crooks received a $500 “star award” that year from the National Math and Science Initiative;
• In a video of the 2022 graduation ceremony, Crooks could be seen crossing the stage to modest applause when his name was called out.

This masthead has put together a visual story, going through, moment by moment, the Trump shooting in Pennsylvania. Michael Koziol, Matthew Absalom-Wong and Tom Compagnoni take readers through the story:

Before any shots were fired, some people in Butler, Pennsylvania, knew something was amiss. A man crawling along a roof, armed with a rifle, had caught the attention of some Trump supporters gathered just outside the rally, out of Trump’s sight but within earshot.

“We could clearly see him with a rifle. We’re pointing at him,” a witness later told the BBC. “I’m thinking, ’Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?”

What happened next over two-and-a-half minutes – all captured on live television and on mobile phones – will become a prominent moment in US history; one which, months away from the presidential election, may yet change the course of history, too.

Read the story, moment by moment, here.

Details have begun to emerge about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man the FBI believes fired on former president Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.

The New York Times is reporting the following:

• Searches of Pennsylvania’s public court records indicate that Crooks did not have a criminal history, and authorities said they had not yet identified a motive;
• Voter registration information showed Crooks was registered as a Republican, but that he also donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, which encourages Democrat voter participation, in January 2021;
• Law enforcement officials had closed down all roads leading towards the home of the suspect’s family in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh, early on Sunday morning local time. The home is about an hour’s drive from the site of the rally in Butler;
• Relatives contacted by reporters did not respond to messages seeking comment;
• The Secret Service says Crooks was fatally wounded after he fired from “an elevated position” outside the rally venue where Trump was speaking;
• Officials say they recovered an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle near the body of the man they believe was the gunman, two law enforcement officials told The New York Times;
• Videos posted online and the local press indicated Crooks graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School;
• According to The Tribune-Review in western Pennsylvania, the school has about 1400 students and Crooks received a $500 “star award” that year from the National Math and Science Initiative;
• In a video of the 2022 graduation ceremony, Crooks could be seen crossing the stage to modest applause when his name was called out.

An image has emerged showing the shooter at the Donald Trump campaign rally in the moments before he opened fire on the former president.

It shows the man lying belly down, his neck craned slightly, looking down the barrel of the gun he fired into the crowd.

He was quickly gunned down by law enforcement.

The man identified by the FBI as the “subject involved” in the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, 20-year-old Pennsylvanian Thomas Matthew Crooks, was a registered Republican, according to state voter records reviewed by news agency Reuters.

Crooks was shot dead by police at the scene.

The agency declined to discuss a motive and asked for help from the public in its investigation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called on Australians to lower the temperature of public debate over divisive issues such as the war in Gaza as he expressed his horror at the apparent attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

Albanese would not be drawn on whether the incident would force changes to security measures for Australian MPs but drew a link between America’s fractious political culture and recent attacks on MPs’ offices and the harassment of parliamentarians by protesters.

“We must lower [the] temperature of debate. There is nothing to be served by some of the escalation of rhetoric that we see in some of our political debate, political discourse, in the democratic world. It’s a phenomenon that’s not unique to the United States,” he said.

He said he was still worried about recent pro-Palestinian protests outside MPs offices, including his own, which has been the subject of a months-long protest.

“I’ve expressed my concern that people who just dismiss actions outside electorate offices, these things can escalate, which is why they need to be called out unequivocally and opposed,” he said.

Read the full story here.