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A police sniper took a picture of Thomas Matthew Crooks roughly 30 minutes before the 20-year-old squeezed off mutiple rounds at Donald Trump during a rally on Saturday, one of several potentially missed opportunities to stop the would-be assasin, according to reports.
Crooks, a loner who is said to have been rejected by his high school shooting club for being such a bad shot he was considered “dangerous,” was spotted on the roof of the American Glass Research building by members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, some 30 minutes before the first bullet flew, Pittsburgh’s WPXI-TV reported.
The ESU team was using the one-story building, adjacent to the event grounds, as a staging area, when one of them noticed Crooks at roughly 5:45 p.m., sitting down and looking at his phone, according to the outlet, which said the sniper notified dispatch, then snapped a photo of Crooks. When Crooks took out a rangefinder, the sniper reportedly radioed commanding officers but no police response was mounted at the time, CBS News reports.
Another officer had seen Crooks on the ground a short time earlier and called him in as “suspicious,” WPXI reported, prompting a search of the immediate area. However, the news channel said, Crooks by then had disappeared.
Police had yet another chance to intercept Crooks about a minute-and-a-half before the shooting started, when concerned bystanders alerted law enforcement to his presence on the rooftop, according to video posted to social media by the Yeshiva World News.
“Everyone’s pointing… someone’s on top of the roof, look!” a rallygoer can be heard saying in the footage. “There he is, right there!”
Follow our live blog for updates on the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump
The video shows Crooks lying on his stomach, taking position, while an oblivious Trump continues addressing the crowd. A woman calls out to a nearby police officer while pointing at Crooks: “He’s on the roof!”
A local cop then tried to confront Crooks atop the structure. However, the officer was using both hands to pull himself to the roof, and couldn’t access his own weapon, so when Crooks turned and pointed an AR-15 assault-style rifle at him, the cop was forced to retreat, Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told The Washington Post.
“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said.
Investigators believe Crooks may have used an air conditioning unit to get on the rooftop, according to CBS News.
In total, there were multiple opportunities to stop Crooks, all of which were allegedly botched or ignored.
One spectator told the Post that he notified a police officer about Crooks twice in two minutes, but that the cop “didn’t say anything” back. MAGA fan Greg Smith told the BBC that he and several others also tried in vain to warn law enforcement that there was “a guy on the roof with a rifle,” to no avail.
Mere seconds before Crooks opened fire, another bystander video shows rally attendees frantically calling out to police and fleeing the area.
At 6:11 p.m., nearly 30 minutes after the ESU sniper photographed Crooks, the first shot rang out. Over the next 15 seconds, Crooks fired at least eight times, slightly wounding Trump with a round that grazed his ear.
Volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed by one of the bullets meant for Trump; U.S. Marine Corps veteran David Dutch, 57, and 74-year-old retiree—and registered Democrat—James Copenhaver were critically wounded. Both men were hospitalized and are now listed in stable condition, according to the Pennsylvania State Police. (Family members of all three men were unable to be reached for comment.)
Crooks was then quickly “neutralized” by a Secret Service countersniper, an agency spokesman said. An unnamed Secret Service official told The Washington Post that the veteran sharpshooter is known as “a legend” within the agency for his highly accurate marksmanship at long distances. He took Crooks out with a single shot, according to the official.
Trump was checked out at a local hospital and released, after which he flew to New Jersey, then made his way to Milwaukee for the opening of the Republican National Convention on Monday. The rifle Crooks used in the shooting was registered to his father, who purchased the weapon more than a decade ago. It is unknown if Matthew Crooks, 53, knew his son had borrowed the weapon or if he took it without permission.
Law enforcement sources told BeaverCountian.com that the deadly gunplay was a result of “extremely poor planning.”
“Was something amiss? Was there a communications issue? What were the precipitating events that this shooter took to get up onto the roof? The next few months are a sprint for the Secret Service, the candidates are going to be doing rallies, multiple events, so the Secret Service has to ensure their methodology and approach doesn’t need to be changed,” retired Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow told The Independent. “Or if they do, they need to enact those changes extremely quickly.”
The Secret Service said the building where Crooks posted up was outside the rally perimeter, and was under the purview of local authorities.
