The attempted assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, rode his bike around the former president’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, before abandoning it in front of police and the crowd and climbing onto a roof where he opened fire, law enforcement officials and witnesses confirmed to The Washington Post.
Exclusive photos show the shooter’s motorbike parked under a tree just metres from the building, from which he fired up to eight bullets, grazing President Trump’s ear, killing a heroic firefighter and wounding two other supporters.
Witnesses first noticed the motorcycle at 5:30 p.m. while Crooks was busy searching for the perfect location, more than 40 minutes before the shooting.
It’s the latest conclusive evidence that Crooks, who was considered a suspicious person until just three hours before the shooting, was able to move freely through a supposedly safe area.
Law enforcement sources said Crooks was identified as a “suspicious person” an hour before the shooting and the Secret Service considered him a “threat” 10 minutes before Trump was due to take the stage, but still allowed the Republican candidate to speak.
ABC News According to reports, a Secret Service anti-sniper team spotted him on the roof 20 minutes before he opened fire.
“I realized at 7 p.m. [nearly an hour after the shooting]”It’s still in the same place, in the same position,” an eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said of the bike, which was left behind along with a pile of belongings.
“I just thought it was strange,” a witness said after seeing the motorcycle in the same area nearly an hour after the shooting.
“Whose bike is that? Whose bike is it? Why are you leaving the scene? Why are you leaving your bike there?”
Images show several officers running towards the scene and then fleeing a bicycle with what appears to be a shirt tossed off the handlebars, shoes discarded at the pedals and a backpack propped up against the wheel.
WPXI
By then, Crooks was dead. Secret Service agents fired back seconds after the 20-year-old Crooks aimed his gun at Trump.
A law enforcement source confirmed that investigators believe Crooks used a motorcycle to scout the large area in and around the Butler County Agricultural Show.
It is unclear whether Crooks was riding his bike while carrying an AR-style assault rifle, which would have been in plain sight for anyone to see.
Obtained by the NY Post
The killer had been under police surveillance long before the assassination attempt, after a local police officer had taken two photographs of a “suspicious person” looking for the best place to fire.
Crooks first raised the alarm at 3 p.m. when he went through security carrying a rangefinder, a binoculars-like device used by hunters and shooters to gauge the distance of long-range shots.
Officers spotted Crooks using a rangefinder and looking at his phone about an hour before Trump was due to take the stage.
The gunman waited until Trump was onstage and on to the roof, where he was spotted by several witnesses, before firing the first shot at 6:11 pm.
Authorities later recovered an AR-style rifle that they believe Crooks had stolen from his father.
Authorities have not yet released a motive for the shooting.
