About 20 minutes later, a sheriff's deputy called Mr Crooks and told him that he needed to come home because an accident had taken place. Crooks pulled up to the house at around 8.20pm on March 24. In court Friday, he described the scene inside his home as 'chaos.' The father explained o the jury that his was was the disciplinarian in the family, and had a stormy but loving relationship with their son. Mr Crooks added that the mother and son would fight often, but later make up and play games together. She was the one who bought the .22 caliber Ruger as a present for Noah in 2010 when he was about 11 years old.
The father said that his son did once say that he wanted to kill his mother, but he didn't take the threat seriously. There was no history of domestic abuse or criminal records associated with any Crooks family members. On March 24, 2012, Crooks is believed to have fired a .22 caliber at his mother at their rural home. The teen was said to be calm and emotionless when he called 911 reporting the shooting. 'The emotions of the young man, from what I've been told, is his demeanor was very calm and kind of stoic. Almost like he was in shock also,' Deputy Greg Beaver told KTTC at the time. Mitchell County Sheriff Curt Younker told the DesMoines Register: 'We’re at a loss. These are good people, very responsible. It is the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen.'
'We have lost our daughter. We have lost our grandson,' Mrs Crooks' mother Beverly Brahm of Mason City told the Albert Lea Tribune. Mrs Crooks, who was listed with her husband William Crooks as the rural Osage property owners, had worked as a nurse at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa while also studying toward her master's degree after accepted at the University of Iowa in 2009. On her Facebook page back in 2010, she praised her son, one of two sons according to Mrs Brahm, for his musical talents on the saxophone as well as his accomplishment in being accepted into a University of Iowa camp to learn Chinese. 'So proud of him!' she wrote. She had also recently published an application on her page reading: 'Click "like" if you love your son!' Mrs Crooks' death comes as the first reported murder in the city of Osage since 1898, according to KAAL-TV.
Speaking of her daughter with pride, her mother, whom she relishes knowing she was able to say 'I love you' to earlier in the day of her passing, described the 37-year-old as studying 'full time, while she was working full time,' according to the Courier.