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As we've been talking with voters here in Western Pennsylvania, many have mentioned the assassination attempt on former President Trump, which took place a short distance from here. So much has happened that that can seem a long time ago, but it was just a week and a half ago. The national media have already moved on, but the community where the gunman came from is still absorbing the shock. NPR's Bobby Allyn went there.
BOBBY ALLYN, BYLINE: To understand Bethel Park, ask Gary Turney whether it's a nice place to live. He's been here more than three decades in a small brick house. For the most part, he's enjoyed it.
GARY TURNEY: Except in the wintertime. When they plow the street, they salt it, he always shifts his salt right there at the stop sign. Wakes you up (laughter).
ALLLYN: That's the biggest complaint - the noisy salt trucks during the snowy months. That is Bethel Park. It's an unassuming working-class town of about 30,000 where people live quiet lives and keep to themselves, which is why the community was really rattled when they discovered the 20-year-old man who shot former President Trump at a rally about an hour away grew up here.
TURNEY: It floored me (laughter). That's unbelievable. I mean, was it two blocks up the street?
ALLLYN: I spent a couple of days walking up and down the streets around where the gunman lived. Police tape around the shooter's house has been taken down. The big broadcast TV trucks have left. The giant scrum of reporters around the house has been reduced to a sole cameraman. Chesleah Kribs is a homeowner close by. She says she's still shaking off the startling knocks on the door she got from federal law enforcement officials around 3:00 a.m. the Sunday after the shooting.
CHESLEAH KRIBS: Everyone get out, you know, types of things. Just given, you know, there was explosives and things of that nature that they were suspecting.
ALLLYN: Investigators found improvised explosives in the shooter's car. They evacuated Kribs and other neighbors. She was allowed to come back around noon that Sunday.
KRIBS: Right at 12:15, you know, you saw neighbors just walking their dogs, whether it's, you know, being nosy or just trying to get back to normal. That's this community, is just - let's just get back to normal.
ALLLYN: It's a refrain I heard a lot from residents - let's all just heal and move beyond this in a united way. Politically speaking, Bethel Park is anything but united. Both Democratic-leaning and Trump signs dot the yards around where the shooter lived. In the 2020 presidential election, Bethel Park went for Trump by just 65 votes. Kribs says, she knows her and her neighbors don't see eye to eye on politics.
KRIBS: What we've been known for is just loving our neighbors and making sure that everyone is known that they're welcome, and regardless of political standpoint or, you know, anything else, we all are still just Bethel Park, and we have to kind of stay together.
ALLLYN: The same day the police tape came down from the shooters block, local Maddy Callicot decided to ride her bike down the street. She stopped to say, there's just a different feeling in the air.
MADDY CALLICOT: You can tell a little vibes different. Definitely, something's a little off.
ALLLYN: She, like every neighbor I talked to, had never spoken to the shooter or the shooter's family, but chatter about him had followed her everywhere - back home, at the grocery store, at her job at a local country club. Everyone is talking about it.
CALLICOT: Definitely terrifying that we are on the spotlight, but people seem to be treating it respectfully.
ALLLYN: Right across the street from the gunman's house is Eddie Stack. He sat on his porch watching a Pittsburgh Pirates game and drinking a beer, as his English Black lab named Lady ran around the yard.
EDDIE STACK: Should I let the dog out?
ALLLYN: He says, Bethel Park will move on. When I asked why, he gave me three words.
STACK: 'Cause we're resilient.
ALLLYN: Bobby Allyn, NPR News, Bethel Park. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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