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Biden calls for “unity” after shooting and death of “heroic” rally participant

Theo

Dan Grzybek, a Democrat who sits on the Allegheny County Council and lives on the same street as the shooter’s home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, described the shock felt by residents after a neighbor attempted to assassinate the former president.

“Nobody expects something like this to be done by someone who lives right in their neighborhood,” Grzybek told NBC News.

Grzybek said that when he was running for his county council seat last fall, he met Crooks’ parents while going door to door in the neighborhood. When he spoke at the family’s front door, Grzybek said he had a “very pleasant conversation” with Crooks’ parents. Grzybek said he had not previously met the shooter.

It was a “very typical voter conversation,” Grzybek said. “Most people don’t ask about your party affiliation first. It’s more about, ‘Okay, what do you want to do on the county council?’ So we talked about things like local air quality and how we deal with incarceration. Those were the conversations we were led to. And I think the partisan nature of politics was left out of that.”

Regarding voters’ reaction to the news, Grzybek said residents were “concerned that this could damage the reputation or reputation of Bethel Park.”

“And of course people take a lot of pride in their community and where they live, and Bethel Park is a really great place to live,” he said. “And we have some really fantastic neighbors who are trying to come together. And the overwhelming majority of what I’ve heard is that people want to lower the temperature and they don’t want something like this to escalate any further. Because when someone takes such drastic action as trying to assassinate the President of the United States, there’s always the possibility that there will be, I don’t want to say inevitable, but very likely, a reaction to that. And I think that’s what worries people the most, that something like this doesn’t happen. And that it doesn’t become even more divided and dangerous in this already very divided environment that we live in.”

Politically, Bethel Park is one of the most divided communities in Allegheny County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Pittsburgh. But Grzybek said the community has stuck together on many occasions, including after severe flooding in 2018.

“I’ve heard from a lot of people who are concerned about the parents and what they’re going through,” he said. “So I think it’s important to note that Bethel Park is a very divided place. And we have a very broad range of opinions across the political spectrum. But I think a really great, a much better example, if you want to know what Bethel Park is like, is if you look back at the floods we had a couple of years ago that really decimated a large portion of the community, and how well the community was able to come together and take care of each other. I think that’s much more indicative of a place like Bethel Park.

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