Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is helped off the stage by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP
At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, former U.S. President Donald Trump became the target of an assassination attempt. The Associated Press (AP) learnt from his campaign representatives that the former U.S. President was doing “fine”. Trump had earlier taken to his social media website to enumerate that a bullet pierced his upper part of the right ear. “I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place,” he wrote.
Trump rally shooting live updates
Law enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks (20) of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Further, the U.S. Secret Service informed about the shooter having been “neutralised” and is dead. They also informed that one spectator was killed and two were critically injured.
July 13 was not the first time that the 78-year-old‘s life was under threat. Similar attempts have been made as far as back as in 2016 when he ran for President for the first time.
2016: An attempt and a scare
In November 2016, a youth was arrested when he tried to wrestle a gun from a police officer at a Trump rally in Las Vegas. He later told investigators about wanting to steal the gun in order to kill the then Presidential candidate. Identified as Micheal Steven Sandford, the 19-year-old British national was immediately arrested. News agency Reuters learnt from court filings that the teenager had been attempting to kill the Presidential candidate for a year. Furthermore, he decided to act upon it now because he “finally felt confident about trying it.” The UK-teen was sentenced to a year in prison.
A month later, Trump again found himself in a situation albeit this time it was a scare. He had to be rushed off the stage by U.S. Secret Service during a rally in Reno, Nevada after someone in the crowd yelled “gun”. However, the federal agency could not find a weapon. Trump came out later amid loud cheers, stating, “Nobody said it was going to be easy for us, but we will never be stopped, never ever be stopped.”
The Ricin attempts in 2018 and 2020
Attempts at causing harm to Trump were also prevalent during his stay at the Oval Office. The modus operandi this time around was ricin. As described by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, it is a poisonous substance found naturally in castor beans. If the beans are chewed and swallowed, they release ricin and can cause injury or poison them.
In 2018, William Clyde Allen III, a former enlisted sailor in the U.S. Navy confessed to have sent letters containing castor beans to then President Trump, FBI Director Chris Wray, Secretary of Defence James Mattis and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson. North America-based news houseCNN learnt from people investigating the occurrence that letters contained “messy handwriting on the envelopes” with one of them containing an index card that read “Jack the missile bean” and “stock powder”.
Another such attempt was made in 2020. This time around, it involved a dual citizen of Canada and France. Pascale Cecile Ferrier, 55, admitted having sent threatening letter containing the poisonous substance to the White House and to eight Texas State law enforcement officials. According to court documents, Ferrier had made ricin at her home in Quebec, Canada.
Earlier in September 2020, the Canadian resident had also proposed on social media that someone “please shoot Trump in the face”. Before the convicted act, she had driven from Canada to the border crossing in New York where she was intercepted for carrying firearms and ammunition. Having been in custody since then, Ferrier was later sentenced to 22 years in prison.
2023: Email threats
A Chicago woman by the name, Tracy Marie Fiorenza (41) was arrested in August 2023 for sending then former President Donald Trump threats that entailed shooting him and his youngest son Barron Trump. According to CBS, she was charged with sending mails threatening to shoot the former President “straight in the face at any opportunity that I get”. In another such email earlier, Fiorenza had allegedly written, “I am going to slam a bullet in Baron (sic) Trump’s head with his father in self-defence.” According to The Guardian, the earlier email was sent to an unidentified head of an educational institution in southern Florida where Trump has his primary residence.
According to CBS, a Facebook page linked to Fiorenza contained several anti-Trump posts, including an image of an effigy of the former President hanged on a tree. The page introduced her as a former social studies teacher a Chicago public school until she was fired in August 2020. However, the publication could not confirm if she was actually a teacher.
