Local cops spotted Thomas Matthew Crooks, the man who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday, almost a half-hour before Crooks fired the shots that hit Trump and killed an heroic fireman in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
The latest on the failed attempt on the 45th president’s life comes as the U.S. Secret Service faces questions about its reliance on local law enforcement to provide perimeter security, and the revelation that local cops used the building from which Crooks fired as a staging area.
The news raises the obvious question of whether the Secret Service knew the cops had spotted Crooks, and if not, why not.
26 Minutes Later
The report comes from Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate WPXI.
“According to multiple law enforcement sources, Thomas Crooks was spotted by law enforcement on a roof nearly 30 minutes before shots were fired that injured Trump, killed a former fire chief, and injured two others in the crowd, the station reported.
The Beaver County Emergency Services team deployed eight members to the site, “including snipers and spotters,” the station continued:
[O]ne of them noticed a suspicious man on a roof near the rally at 5:45 p.m., called it in and took a picture of the person. We have learned from our sources the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. We’re told it’s not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point.
According to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken.
Twenty-six minutes later, the station reported, Crooks opened fire. He hit Trump in the ear and killed firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Earlier Reports
As The New American reported earlier today, citing the Washington Post, local cops handled perimeter security at the Trump rally.
At a hearing before the U.S. House Oversight Committee next week, U.S. Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle will find herself answering tough questions about that and serious problems with the protective detail at the event.
Aside from why Secret Service left perimeter security to local cops, congressmen will want to know how Crooks made it to the roof of a building that was, ABC reported, the staging area for local cops.
As well, they’ll likely ask why the agents weren’t deployed to the rooftop given that was identified as a major risk two days before the event, as NBC reported.
They will also want to know whether former agent Dan Bongino’s claim that “very few” Secret Service agents were at the event are true. Bongino told Fox News’s Jesse Watters that agents from Homeland Security Investigations were in the protective detail.
Bongino also complained that the Secret Service did not deploy aerial and other high-tech surveillance.
