The exact timeline of the stunning failure that led to an armed 20-year-old man with no military training scaling a building full of police anti-sniper teams in broad daylight and narrowly killing former President Donald Trump is beginning to emerge.
Trump’s gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was seen by police at least twice, 26 minutes before police said he opened fire on a crowd at a Pennsylvania rally, wounding former President Trump and two others and killing a former fire chief. WPXI Source.
According to WPXI, Beaver County Emergency Services, dispatched from the Pittsburgh suburb of Butler County, Pennsylvania, adjacent to the Trump rally, spotted Cooks on the roof, took photos and called the police around 5:45 p.m.
Remarkably, despite his high profile, Crooks not only managed to avoid detection but also secured a spot on the rooftop under the noses of a local police sniper team stationed inside the building, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Sources said the building, an AGR International factory next to the Butler County Agricultural Fairgrounds, was being used by local police as a “lookout post” for snipers to search for threats while the former president spoke on stage just 130 yards away.
Sources said officers were inside the building at the time of the shooting but not on the roof.
Crooks scaled the building unhindered and fired up to eight shots from an AR-style assault rifle, grazed Mr Trump’s ear, killing one Trump supporter and wounding two others.
It was unclear as of Monday night whether any local police officers assigned to security outside the rally could have warned the Secret Service about the shooter, police officials said.
Chilling video from the rally depicts a deadly security blunder, including nearly two minutes of footage that may go down in history as the worst incident in the Secret Service’s more than 100-year history of protecting U.S. presidents.
Multi-feed video montages are Milk Bar TVThe video, which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times on X Channel, shows the assassination attempt unfolding in real time from multiple different perspectives.
The footage shows more than 120 harrowing seconds, from the moment protesters first spotted Crooks on the roof to the moment he fired his rifle, and perhaps most disturbingly, the multiple attempts by witnesses to the would-be assassin to notify police, who were patrolling nearby, were unsuccessful.
The surreal footage matches what witnesses told reporters after the shooting, including some at the rally who said they were aware of Crooks’ presence long before he fired several shots from an AR-style semi-automatic rifle.
A local officer from the Butler County Police Department managed to get onto the roof and confront the gunman, who pointed his rifle at the officer. Butler County sheriff defends failure The officer who tried to stop Crooks said he still tried to get up but was forced to let go when the weapon was presented to him.
A law enforcement source who has worked on protecting the president told The Post that Secret Service field offices hosting events routinely engage in tug-of-war over budgets with financial managers in Washington.
The source said field offices typically receive only a “small fraction” of what they request.
Read the latest Washington Post article about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
This means authorities must rely on local law enforcement to supplement their resources, and smaller municipalities typically lack the resources of larger cities like New York.
Butler’s disappearance may also have been due to Crooks being on a downward sloping roof that would have put him out of the view of the counter-sniper team stationed near Trump, the sources said.
James A. Gagliano, a law enforcement analyst who served with the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) and was a senior SWAT team leader, watched the horrifying two-minute video and offered some insight.
“The investigation is still early days, but given its location on a rooftop that is accessible from the ground and 130 yards away from a former president, a current presidential candidate and a very controversial figure, was it a place that should have been covered? In my opinion, yes,” he said.
Gagliano said it was “nothing short of a miracle” that Trump survived the assassination attempt, and that it was largely down to Crooks’ poor shooting skills.
“A 130-yard shot is what they call a cake shot in the golf business,” he said.
“Anyone with reasonable marksmanship skills can simply close their eyes, hold their breath and pull the trigger.”
He said a final decision would be made pending the outcome of the investigation, but called Saturday’s disaster “a catastrophic, massive systems failure that will be analysed for years to come.”
In the video, a two-minute timer begins with a split-screen of Trump speaking on stage and bystander footage taken near the manufacturing building where Crooks was holding the rifle.
The videographer filming the footage suddenly verbally acknowledged a commotion nearby, apparently after several rally attendees noticed Crooks on the roof: “Look, they’re all pointing,” he said, observing the crowd’s reaction to this unusual and disturbing sight.
Seconds later, the camera pans to show what appears to be uniformed police officers circling the front of the industrial building where the 20-year-old gunman was hiding.
At this point, more onlookers have crowded around to watch, chatting amongst themselves about what they’ve seen. “Oh, there’s someone on the roof, look! They’re up there, can you see them? They’re lying there, can you see them?” the videographer asks.
“Yes, I’m lying down,” the woman replied.
Just before the 17 second mark, Crooks appears on-screen for the first time, appearing to be lying on his right side.
By the 22-second mark, members of the nearby crowd were also becoming interested and began moving closer to get a glimpse, and the scene became visibly more tense.
Ten seconds later, the videographer points Crooks out to another male passerby, and at the 34-second mark, Crooks is clearly seen adjusting his position so that he is lying on his stomach.
At that exact moment, with Crooks still in frame and maneuvering his position, a male voice calls out, “Officer!”
An anxious-looking woman called the police and began to describe the events she had witnessed: “Come here, he’s on the roof! He’s fallen! Here he is, lying on the roof! He’s standing up now, and has fallen back onto the roof.”
At this point, other members of the crowd can be heard screaming as well, but their voices are unintelligible.
Then at the 52-second mark, the montage changes perspective to a single shot of Trump still speaking on stage, just a minute after the shooting.
As the timer hit one minute and 15 seconds, the screen switched to a split screen with President Trump shown in real time on both sides, as he demanded a chart boasting about the lower number of illegal immigrants under his administration compared to President Biden’s.
Then, at the 1 minute 49 second mark, the camera cuts to four simultaneous shots: two showing Trump from the front, one from behind and one of the original cameraman spotting Crooks on the roof.
The next moment, a man wearing what appears to be military clothing and a green helmet appears on-screen and appears to wave to the crowd before walking in the opposite direction from the manufacturing building and disappearing off-screen.
At the 1 minute 55 second mark, a man yells, “He’s got a gun!” The camera becomes increasingly shaky as what appear to be uniformed police officers are seen walking toward the building where Crooks is stationed.
Two minutes and one second into the count, three gunshots rang out, sending the room into chaos, and blood-curdling screams erupted from the crowd as Trump fell to the floor and Secret Service agents surrounded him.
At the 2:08 mark, a series of gunshots can be heard as the audience continues to scream, then a few seconds later, a male voice warns, “He’s coming for you! Watch out!”, a female screams, and a final gunshot is heard.
The camera then focuses again on the roof, this time showing Crooks lying motionless, his body blurred, and the shooter dead.
