The story of the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday just took another twist.

According to Fox News, the parents of 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks called law enforcement “in the hours leading up to the shooting” because they couldn’t locate their son.

“They gave them the heads up that ‘something’s going on with our son. We are worried,'” Fox News Harris Faulkner said Faulkner said in a breaking news “alert” published to YouTube early Wednesday afternoon.

“We don’t know the texture, or the details, of their concerns. So, in other words, were they worried that he had a gun? Were they worried … You know, what were they worried about?”

The report appears, at least, to contradict previous reporting.

NBC News reported Monday, citing “three senior law enforcement officials,” that Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, had called police after the shooting to report that his son was missing, along with the elder Crooks’ AR-15 rifle.

CNN, meanwhile, reported Wednesday that Crooks had requested Saturday off from work at his job as a dietary aide at a nursing home because he had “something to do.” That report, citing sources, stated that Crooks’ father reported him missing at 11 p.m. and that he told agents that he thought his son had gone to a rifle range and that he expected him home about 1 p.m.

The reports might not necessarily conflict. Crooks’ parents might have made multiple calls, and the sources might have been referring to different calls. Or the sources might have been giving bad information or simply wrong.

But it does add another strange element to an already strange case.

And it lit up on social media.

“ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” one prominent pro-MAGA account that parodies Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

Another X user had questions.

Is this an attempt to establish an alibi? How often do parents report a 20 yr old missing after a few hours on a Saturday morning? They definitely knew he was up to something.

— Gideon 6ix✍️ (@Gideon_6ix) July 17, 2024

“Is this an attempt to establish an alibi?” the user wrote in a comment responding to a post by conservative commentator Collin Rugg.  “How often do parents report a 20 yr old missing after a few hours on a Saturday morning?”

Faulkner’s frustration with the lack of information coming out was evident in her report. The gunman not only came within a hair’s breadth from killing Trump, she noted, he actually did kill a man attending the rally, and left two others critically wounded.

“Were they were worried that he was going to try to … attempt … to kill a sitting president and … turn into an assassin and kill another person and injure two others? It was an attempted assassination on Trump, but he managed to murder anyway,” she said. (She no doubt meant to say “former president.”)

“Are we talking about that? What were they giving the cops a heads-up about? This is the first time we are hearing this.”

Story Editor