Witnesses warned police of Trump shooter at least 86 seconds before gunfire, video shows

Almost immediately after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday, some in the crowd told reporters that they had tried to alert law enforcement that a suspicious man was on a nearby roof. Now, a newly surfaced video backs up those accounts of warnings, showing a chaotic scene in which bystanders started calling out to police nearly a minute and a half before the shots rang out.

The footage, posted to social media late Sunday, shows several witnesses yelling and directing at least one police officer toward the roof of a neighboring business. Authorities say that 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump and attendees from the roof before he was killed by law enforcement.

In the new video, one man shouts “Officer! Officer!” as others point toward the building. “He’s on the roof!” a woman says. The video also shows a police officer in a black uniform looking up toward the top of the building.

Growing evidence that law enforcement were made aware of Crooks before he opened fire has put the Secret Service under pressure to explain what analysts have described as a major security failure. After Crooks fired on the rally, Trump was wounded, two members of the audience were injured and one was dead.

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle sent a memo to her agents Sunday praising their fast efforts to move Trump to safety after shots were fired. Also Sunday, President Biden said he had ordered an “independent review” of security at the rally. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday echoed that call for an independent investigation, calling the attempted assassination a security “failure.”

Crooks began firing 2 minutes, 2 seconds after the starting point of the newly published video, which begins with a man’s voice saying that people were pointing toward the roof, according to a Washington Post analysis of footage from the event. The shots began 86 seconds after the first audible attempts to alert police, according to the analysis, which synchronized several clips based on the sound of Trump’s voice over the public address system as he addressed supporters at a farm show grounds in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

The new video supports previously reported statements from other witnesses, who said in interviews with the Post and other media that they warned police a man had climbed onto the roof of the business, Agr International, which makes industrial equipment.

The Agr building was not inside the secure area guarded by the Secret Service, which required members of the public to pass through a metal detector before entering.

While Secret Service officers monitored the event inside the secure area, police officers from local township and county departments were assigned to secure the outer perimeter, the Post has reported. Officials said it was typical for the Secret Service to assign local police this responsibility, but plans for securing the perimeter are structured and signed off by the Secret Service and are ultimately part of the overall Secret Service security plan for the event.

The uniform and department emblem worn by the police officer in the new video appears to match those of the Butler Township Police Department. The department, which had personnel at the event according to local and county officials, did not respond to questions from The Post.

Ben Maser, who was watching the event from just outside the security perimeter, told The Post that he reported to a police officer twice in the span of two minutes that he had seen a suspicious-looking man on the building roof. Maser, who confirmed that he is visible in the newly surfaced video clip, said he first warned the officer an estimated 30 seconds before the time period captured in the video.

The police officer “didn’t say anything” to Maser in response to either alert, he said. On the first occasion, when Maser saw the man on the roof moving forward in a crouched position, the officer looked in the direction of the building, according to Maser. On the second, when the man was lying down, Maser said that he advised the officer to move to a spot where he would be able to see the man.

“When I turned to go back to that spot is when I heard the gunshots, and then it was just chaos,” said Maser, a 41-year-old welder who lives near the event site.

Maser said he never saw a gun with the man on the roof, and no gun can be seen in the newly surfaced video.

Another witness, Greg Smith, told BBC News that he and other attendees outside the secure perimeter tried for “two or three minutes” to alert police to Crooks, after they saw him crawl on the Agr roof carrying a rifle. Smith said he was dismayed that Trump was not removed from the stage before shots rang out

“The police are down there running around on the ground,” Smith said. “We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle.’ And the police were like ‘Huh? What?’ like they didn’t know what was going on.”

Smith did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.

Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told The Post that one local police officer did confront Crooks before the shooting. It was not immediately clear whether that officer was the one seen examining the building in the newly surfaced video footage.

The officer hoisted himself up on the roof to check on reports of a suspicious man, Slupe said. But the officer, who was not able to access a gun because he was gripping the edge of the roof, had to drop down when the shooter aimed his weapon at him, the sheriff said.

“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said. The shooter then began firing at the rally site, the sheriff said.

An executive at Agr International, which manufactures quality control equipment for the bottle industry, told The Post that the company had worked with local police before the event on security matters. Police blocked off public access to the company’s parking lot and that space was available for law enforcement use, said William Bellis, the firm’s chief financial officer.

Bellis said there was no easy way to access the roof of Agr’s building. “If they were on the roof they’d need a ladder,” he said soon after the shooting Saturday. Aerial video footage from after the event showed a ladder propped against the building that evening. It is not clear when it was placed there.