“Kill confirmed.”
Dramatic new video from the ground, captured by a Butler, Pennsylvania resident, shows a front-row view of police frantically searching for Thomas Matthew Crooks more than four minutes before he fired eight sniper shots at former President Donald J. Trump.
An account named X, with the first name “Dave” and the handle @RealDJStew724, posted a 9-minute, 27-second video covering the period from 4 minutes and 55 seconds before the 6:11 p.m. shooting to 4 minutes and 32 seconds after the first shot was fired.
The videographer was on the south side of the American Glass Research Building 6, where Crooks launched the attack with an AR-15 rifle on the roof. The video states that Dave saw officers running around the building, looking to the roof in an attempt to find Crooks.
The man hid behind a tree to hide himself.
“Oh my goodness, there’s someone in this building,” he said as four officers lined up on the south and east ends of the single-story warehouse.
“They shot him in the head. Big bushy hair!”
Trump’s speech, which can be heard in the background of the video, includes words that come at an ironic time given the danger he was in.
“We have millions of people in our country who should not be here,” the former president told tens of thousands of rally attendees about 130 yards away. “These are dangerous people. Criminals. We have criminals. We have drug dealers. We have people who should not be here.”
The video shows passersby running toward a chain link fence on the south side of the building on the edge of the Butler Farm Show property.
“Get small, you don’t know what’s going on,” the videographer said to someone off-camera.
In the video, Crooks is not visible to officers or spectators on the ground, except for a brief moment when he raises his head from the top of the roof, which he likely needed to do in order to visually identify and fire on his target. Crooks is visible in 12 frames of the video, beginning at the 4:50 mark. The first rifle shot is heard five seconds later.
Just before the first shot rang out, a voice rang out from a distance: “He’s got a gun!”
Crooks fired the first shot just after 6:11 p.m., then two more shots, audio from the video shows, before Crooks fired five more shots in a row.
Less than a second later, another gunshot, presumably from a countersniper, can be heard, and 10 seconds later, a final gunshot from another countersniper is recorded on video.
“Everyone, get down!” the videographer said to a nearby passerby. “Yeah, get down. Get behind this tree with me. Behind this tree.”
One spectator near the tree shared what he saw in a series of emotional statements.
“They killed the guy!” he said.
“Yeah, I saw a big hair fly up in the air.”
“They shot him in the head. Big bushy hair!”
“Did you shoot him in the head?” a passerby yelled at a passing police officer.
The videographer then repeats, claiming it is an officer’s response, “Confirmed kill.”
On July 29, the @RealDJStew724 account pointed out that a portion of X’s video showed what appeared to be an object flying behind a blue water tower on the east side of the American Glass Research campus. The object was traveling at high speeds. The object was visible in at least three frames of the video, and possibly a fourth.
Less than 10 seconds before Crooks opened fire on President Trump and the crowd at the rally, the object believed to be a drone appeared to fly towards Crooks and Building 6.
The whistleblower told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) that local law enforcement had offered drone insurance for Trump events but the Secret Service repeatedly rejected it.
During a U.S. Senate hearing on the assassination attempt on July 30, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that the law enforcement drone system was scheduled to be up and running by 3 p.m. but wasn’t activated until 5:20 p.m. due to “cellular bandwidth issues.”
The Blaze News reached out to the U.S. Secret Service to confirm whether the object seen in the video was a law enforcement drone. Secret Service spokesman Joseph Rouse said, “The investigation is being handled by the FBI, and we respectfully report back to you.”
The Blaze News reached out to the FBI about the drone but had not received a response at the time of publication.
The new video clearly shows the blue water tower on the east side of the American Glass Research Campus. The video, taken about 15 seconds before the shooting, shows the full height of the water tower, including the walkway about halfway up the tank. No one is there.
One popular theory on social media is that a gunman opened fire on President Trump from a nearby water tower.
Former FBI special agent Kyle Serafin said the video should dispel two theories about the shooting.
“To everyone talking about multiple shooters… this audio is very simple,” Seraphin wrote to X. “8 shots fired by Crooks. 1 shot from a suppressed (anti-sniper) weapon. Then a pause, 1 final shot from a suppressed weapon. Appears to be another anti-sniper. No water tower. 3 shooters.”
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