Cellphone video taken Saturday showed panicked Trump rally-goers pointing at the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and yelling for him to call police as he clambered onto a roof and took up positions minutes before the shooting.
Video from the scene shows attendees attempting to alert authorities to the presence of a shooter 86 seconds before Crooks opened fire.
Additional footage of the incident can be seen showing people fleeing the scene about 15 seconds before the shots were fired, and people can be heard yelling that a man on a roof had a gun.
“Look, people are pointing,” the man filming the video can be heard saying. “He’s over there. He’s over there, see? He’s lying there, see? What’s going on?”
Classmates of Trump shooter Thomas Crooks say he was a quiet student as investigators search for motive
A blurry cellphone video shows, from a rally-goer’s perspective, Thomas Matthew Crooks crawling across a rooftop moments before attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump. (Fox News Digital)
“He’s on the roof,” another woman can be heard yelling. “Right here.”
It is unclear whether Crooks purchased a ladder at a Home Depot a short drive from his parents’ home before Saturday’s rally and used it to climb to the roof of a building just outside the security perimeter set up for the former president on the grounds and about 410 feet from the main stage where Trump stood.
Former President Trump survives assassination attempt; FBI identifies perpetrator as Thomas Matthew Crooks
Four counter-sniper teams were at the rally — two from the Secret Service and two from local police — and the building where Crooks opened fire was a “staging area” for one of the local counter-sniper teams, according to a federal police official familiar with security planning.
Sources said the team was stationed inside or nearby the building.
Trump assassination attempt: What we know about how it happened
Undated photograph of Thomas Matthew Crookes. (Courtesy of AFP)
A local police officer said one of the shooters saw Crooks outside the building, looking up at the roof, studying the building before disappearing. CBS News. He then saw the shooter return to the building, sit down and look at his cell phone.
According to the outlet, one of the snipers took a photograph of Crooks and saw him looking through a rangefinder minutes before the assassination attempt, and radioed the command post to try to send the photo up the chain of command before Crooks opened fire.
Republican candidate Donald Trump was photographed being escorted off stage, bleeding from the face and surrounded by Secret Service agents, during a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)
More than a dozen firearms were found inside the Crooks family home. NBC News reported: After the shooting, the gunman’s father called police to report that an AR rifle was missing. The rifle used in the shooting was legally purchased and may have belonged to the gunman’s father.
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Authorities say Crooks tried to kill Trump alone, but the investigation remains ongoing. Crooks’ classmates at Bethel Park High School, from which he graduated in 2022, described him as a quiet loner who was bullied.
