An eyewitness claims to have tried to alert police and Secret Service to the presence of the gunman repeatedly before he opened fire
Police and Secret Service agents ignored repeated warnings about a gunman, minutes before he attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump, an eyewitness has claimed.
The man, a local Trump supporter, made the claims in an interview with BBC News.
The man was just outside the event with a group when they saw the would-be assassin crawling along a nearby roof armed with a rifle.
this BBC interview with a guy outside the security perimeter who claims he saw the shooter before he fired is absolutely wild pic.twitter.com/vJpKZTxSAe
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) July 13, 2024
“We noticed a guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us. So we’re standing there, we’re pointing at the guy crawling up the roof… he had a rifle. We could clearly see him with a rifle, absolutely. And we’re pointing at him. The police are down there running around on the ground, and we’re like, ‘Hey, man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle!’ And the police were like, ‘Huh? What?’
“They didn’t know what was going on. We were like, ‘Hey right here on the roof. We can see him from right here. We see him. He’s crawling.’ And next thing you know, I’m thinking ‘Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?’ I’m standing there pointing at him [the gunman] for two or three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I’m pointing at the roof, just standing there like this, and next thing you know, five shots ring out.”
The reporter interviewing the man pressed him to confirm that the shooter was visible for minutes before the attempted assassination.
The man confirmed: “At least three to four minutes.”
The man went on to explain that the view of the Secret Service agents was probably obscured, but then questioned why there weren’t agents on the roof where the shooter positioned himself.
“But why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here? This is not a big place.”
The FBI have now identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as the would-be assassin.
Biographical details about Crooks are already beginning to emerge and be reported by the mainstream media.
Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022.
He was apparently registered to vote as a Republican, but Election Commission records show that a donor with the same name and address gave $15 to a Democrat PAC called Progressive Turnout Project in 2021.
Crooks’ father told CNN that he was still trying to understand “what the hell is going on,” and would reserve comment “until I talk to law enforcement.”
