In the Bethel Park community where the shooter lived, residents tend to be reclusive.
John Altdorfer for NPR
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John Altdorfer for NPR
BETHEL PARK, Pa. — To understand this quiet suburb of Pittsburgh, just ask Gary Turney if it’s an easy place to live.
Turney, 70, a retired mechanic, has lived in the community for more than three decades and, for the most part, has enjoyed his work.
“Except in the winter, when they plow the road, they salt it, and he always salts it right at the stop sign,” Turney said, pointing out the window of his modest brick house at an intersection just outside. “It wakes you up,” he said with a laugh.
That’s the biggest complaint here: the noise of the salt trucks during the snowy months. That’s Bethel Park.
It is a modest working-class community of about 30,000 people, where people live private and closed lives.
That’s part of why recent events came as a bolt from the blue: when they discovered the 20-year-old man attempted to assassinate former President Trump at a protest here that made international headlines in this neglected Pennsylvania suburb.
“It blew my mind. It was unbelievable,” Turney said. “What, two blocks away?”
Federal investigators are still investigating what led to the July 13 assassination, but there is little evidence of a clear motive.
Gary Turney, 70, a retired mechanic, has lived in the community for more than three decades and enjoys his work.
John Altdorfer for NPR
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John Altdorfer for NPR
On Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the gunman did a Google search before the shooting “How Far Was Oswald From Kennedy,” referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald.
“It was clearly a search that had significant implications for his mental state,” Wray said, noting that the search took place the same day the gunman registered for a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., about an hour from Bethel Park.
As the investigation continues, the shooter’s community is hoping the media attention will end.
A few days of walking the streets of Bethel Park and talking to locals revealed that the neighborhood is still reeling from the attempted assassination of former President Trump, but after nearly two weeks of constant attention, residents are ready to move past the violence.
And looking around the region, we can see signs of a crisis that is slowly easing.
The police tape around the shooter’s house had been removed; the large television trucks had left; the reporters who had gathered around the house had been reduced to a single cameraman.
Chesleah Kribs, 30, a homeowner who lives near the shooter’s home.
John Altdorfer for NPR
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John Altdorfer for NPR
Chesleah Kribs, 30, a homeowner who lives down the street from the shooter’s home, said she was still reeling from the startling knocks on her door from federal law enforcement officers around 3 a.m. Sunday after the shooting.
“It was like, ‘everyone get out,’ just thinking about explosives and things like that that they suspected could happen,” Kribs recalled recently.
Investigators detect homemade explosives in the shooter’s car. Authorities evacuated Kribs and other neighbors. She was allowed to return around noon that Sunday.
“At 12:15, you see neighbors just walking their dogs, whether out of curiosity or just trying to get back to normal. That’s what this community is: Let’s get back to normal,” she said.
This was the refrain repeated quite a few times at Bethel Park: Let’s heal together and get through this as one.
Politically, Bethel Park is anything but unified, an iconic snapshot of America’s political divide. Both Democratic and Trump-leaning signs dot the grounds where the shooter lived.
In the 2020 presidential election, Bethel Park supported Trump. only 65 votes.
Kribs said she knows she and her neighbors don’t see eye to eye on politics, but that’s never been an issue.
“What we are known for is loving our neighbors and making sure everyone knows they are welcome, regardless of political views or anything else, we are all still Bethel Park and we have to come together,” she said.
In the days after the shooting, investigators sealed off the street where the gunman lived.
John Altdorfer for NPR
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John Altdorfer for NPR
The same day police tape was removed from the shooter’s home, local Maddy Callicot, 18, decided to ride her bike down the street. She said there was just a strange feeling in the air.
“You could tell the atmosphere was different,” she said. “Something was definitely wrong.”
She, like most of the neighbors around the shooter, had never spoken to him, or his family, but talk of the shooter haunted her everywhere she went — back home, the grocery store, her job at a local country club. Everyone was talking about it, she said.
“It’s scary when we’re in the spotlight, but people seem to treat it with respect,” she said.
Right across the street from the gunman’s house was Eddie Stack.
One recent evening, he sat on his porch watching a Pittsburgh Pirates game and drinking beer while his black English Labrador retriever named Lady ran around the field.
He described the gunman as “a quiet, nerdy kid” who never talked to his neighbors.
“No one I spoke to actually knew the family, and we never met the child,” he said, referring to the shooter.
He said Bethel Park will get through this dark time. When asked why, he gave a short answer.
“Because we have resilience,” he said.
