Witnesses warned police about the shooter at Trump rally before shots were fired, video shows

Footage posted on social media late Sunday shows several witnesses screaming and directing at least one police officer to the roof of a neighboring business. Authorities say 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired shots at Trump and those in attendance from the roof before being killed by police officers.

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

Mounting evidence that law enforcement was alerted to Crooks’ use of firearms is putting pressure on the Secret Service to explain what analysts call a major security failure that allowed Crooks to injure Trump, kill a bystander and wound two others.

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

According to a Washington Post analysis of footage of the incident, the crooks began shooting two minutes and two seconds after the start point of the newly released video. The video begins with a man’s voice saying people are pointing at the roof. The shooting began 86 seconds after the first audible attempts to alert police, according to the analysis, which dubbed several clips based on the sound of Trump’s voice over the public address system as he addressed his supporters at an agricultural showground in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

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

The Agr building was not located within the Secret Service-guarded security perimeter, where visitors had to pass through a metal detector before entering.

While Secret Service officers monitored the event inside the cordoned-off area, police officers from local municipal and county departments were assigned to secure the outside perimeter, the Post reported. Officials said it is common practice for the Secret Service to delegate that responsibility to local police, but plans to secure the outside perimeter would be developed and approved by the Secret Service and ultimately be part of the Secret Service’s overall security plan for the event.

The uniform and badge worn by the officer in the new video appear to match those of the Butler Township Police Department. The agency, which local and county officials said had personnel at the event, did not respond to questions from The Post.

Ben Maser, who watched the action from just outside the security perimeter, told the Post he reported to an officer twice within two minutes that he saw a suspicious-looking man on the roof of the building. Maser, who confirmed he is seen in the newly surfaced video clip, said he warned the officer an estimated 30 seconds before the time captured in the video.

The police officer “didn’t say anything” to either alarm, he said. The first time, when Maser saw the man walking forward in a crouched position on the roof, the police officer looked toward the building, Maser said. The second time, when the man was on the ground, he advised the police officer to move to a place where he could see the man, Maser said.

“When I turned around to go back to the scene, I heard the shots and then there was just chaos,” said Maser, a 41-year-old welder who lives near the scene of the accident.

Maser said he never saw a gun on the man on the roof, and no weapon is visible in the newly surfaced video.

Another witness, Greg Smith, told BBC News that he and other attendees outside the security perimeter spent “two or three minutes” trying to alert police to Crooks after they saw him crawling onto the roof of the rally with a rifle in his hand. Smith said he was dismayed that Trump was not removed from the stage before shots were fired.

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

Smith did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.

Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told the Post that a local police officer confronted Crooks before the shooting. It was not immediately clear if that officer was the one seen investigating the building in the newly surfaced video footage.

The officer hoisted himself onto the roof to investigate reports of a suspicious man, Slupe said. But the officer, who did not have access to a weapon because he was holding onto the edge of the roof, had to lower himself down when the gunman pointed his weapon at him, the sheriff said.

“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said. Then the gunman started shooting at the gathering place, the sheriff said.

An executive at Agr International, a manufacturer of quality control equipment for the bottling industry, told the Post the company had been working with local police on safety issues before the incident. Police had blocked public access to the company’s parking lot and that space was available to law enforcement, said William Bellis, the company’s chief financial officer.

Bellis said there was no easy way to get to the roof of Agr’s building. “If they were on the roof, they would need a ladder,” he said shortly after Saturday’s shooting. Aerial photos from after the incident show a ladder leaning against the building that evening. It is not clear when it was placed there.

Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.