A cop encountered would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks before he shot former President Donald Trump yesterday at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks then fired at Trump, The Associated Press (AP) revealed today.
Rally attendees had warned cops that Crooks was on the roof of a building some 150 yards away from the stage where Trump was speaking.
Latest Report
Crooks tried to assassinate Trump at a rally packed with 50,000 people in the small town about 33 miles north of Pittsburgh.
A bullet struck Trump in the ear. Secret Service agents tackled him and rushed him off the stage. Trump raised a defiant fist and shouted “Fight, Fight, Fight!”
But just before Crooks fired the nearly fatal headshot, a cop confronted him on the nearby rooftop.
“Not long before shots rang out, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the roof of a nearby building and warned local police, according to two law enforcement officials,” AP reported:
One local police officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that’s when Secret Service snipers shot him, said the officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Crooks had “rudimentary” bomb-making materials in his vehicle and at his home, AP also reported.
Witnesses Warned Cops
Two witnesses said they warned police about Crooks.
One crucial witness, Greg Smith, who saw the shooter moving to the roof, spoke with the BBC at length.
The witness said he noticed Crooks “bear-crawling” up the roof some 50 feet away:
We’re pointing at the guy crawling up the roof … he had a rifle. We could clearly see him with a rifle, absolutely. We’re pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, “hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle.”
Police didn’t seem to know what was happening, but Greg and others continued to point at the man. “Right here on the roof, we can see him from right here. We see him. He’s crawling,” Greg said.
“I’m thinking to myself ‘why is Trump still speaking,’” he continued:
Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I’m standing there pointing at him for you know, two or three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I’m pointing at that roof. … And next thing you know, five shots ring out.
Greg said he is “100 percent” certain the shots came from Crooks. Crooks was there at least three or four minutes, he said:
We were telling the police. We were pointing at him for the Secret Service who were looking at us from the top of the barn. They were looking at us the whole time when we were standing by that tree [with] binoculars.
Greg said the agents probably couldn’t see Crooks. “But why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here. I mean, this is not a big place.”
The Secret Service “blew his head off,” Greg said. “There’s only a few buildings around here,” he said. “Why is Secret Service not on every building?”
Another witness said he told police about Crooks as well.
“I was standing there like everybody else, waiting for Trump. And as Trump started, I noticed two officers that were looking for something or somebody,” the man told CBS:
So I was looking around myself and seeing a guy on top of one of the buildings go in between one building to the next and went and told the officer that he was up there. And when I went back to my spot, I heard that people could still see the person from where they were standing. So I checked that out and I went back to tell the officer that if he came over there, he could see them. And when I turned my back is when the shots started and then it took me a second or two to figure out exactly what it was.
Review Ordered
President Joe Biden has ordered an independent review of the event, CBS News reported, and spoke to Trump last night.
“The president said the independent security review of Saturday’s rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, will assess ‘exactly what happened,’ and the results of that review will be made public,” CBS reported:
Mr. Biden also said he has instructed the Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Republicans and reporters landed in Wisconsin to the news of the assassination attempt. Trump, who has yet to name his vice presidential running mate, is expected to be formally nominated at the convention.
As The New American reported earlier today, the chief of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, is under fire for emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion instead of presidential protection.
Cheatle conceived the daffy 30X30 policy to ensure that 30 percent of agents are women by 2030. She also permitted a “YouTube influencer” to train with agents, a waste of agency resources.
The women agents on yesterday’s detail seemed panicked and incompetent, video showed. One apparently couldn’t even reholster her pistol.
