New body camera video released Thursday by Butler Township from the day a man attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump shows the moment police encountered the shooter before he opened fire on the crowd in Pennsylvania and includes a police officer saying he alerted the Secret Service to the building’s vulnerability.
In one video, a Butler Township officer is hoisted onto the roof of a building near the July 13 rally, minutes before Trump speaks.
The officer appears to peek his head over the roof before quickly falling to the ground and running to a nearby police cruiser, the video shows. The shooter cannot be seen in this angle of the body camera video and there is no audio.
NBC News previously reported that at that moment, the officer came face to face with the shooter, Thomas Crooks, who pointed his gun at the officer, causing the officer to fall to the ground, according to the Butler Township Manager, Tom Knights.
Later in the video, the officer appears to confirm the encounter, saying, “fuck, so close, man, he turned to me.”
Authorities later determined that the shooter was atop a building in a complex near the Butler Farm Show — where Trump was giving his speech — that was about 450 feet (148 meters) from Trump and outside the security perimeter established by the Secret Service at that time. day.
The thieves fired eight shots, cutting Trump in the ear, killing one rally attendee and seriously injuring two others. Crooks was shot and killed by counter-snipers within seconds.
A later portion of the same video clip shows Butler Township officer jumping back onto the roof. In that video, Crooks’ bloodied body can be seen, handcuffed, after Secret Service snipers shot and killed him.
“Before you motherfucker came here, I stuck my head in here like a fool all by myself, man…” the officer said in radio traffic captured in the clip. “I was yelling, ‘bro, on top of the roof, bro’, were you on the same frequency?”
An unknown member of the SWAT team then said he was “upset” that he “couldn’t…find him,” apparently referring to Crooks.
In another clip released Thursday, an unidentified Butler Township official said about 10 minutes after Trump was shot that he told the Secret Service about the building’s vulnerability days before the rally.
The officer is heard saying he “told them they needed to post the guys here. I told them that.”
When asked “who” he told, the officer replied, “the Secret Service.”
The official said he told Secret Service members on July 9 — four days before the July 13 event — to “post guys here,” referring to the building where the shooter was found.
“How the hell can you miss a guy walking around here?” said the officer.
When asked if the officer’s team was on the roof, the officer replied no and said the team was inside. Some back and forth can be heard in the audio about where people were parked.
The official added that the Secret Service assured authorities earlier in the week that “we’re going to post guys here.” He does not specify the location in the video.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service, said in a statement that the agency is reviewing the video.
“The U.S. Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” Guglielmi said. “The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was a failure by the U.S. Secret Service, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures to ensure a tragedy like this never happens again.”
Pennsylvania State Police said they identified Crooks as a “suspect” before the attack.
The Secret Service was criticized for its handling of the incident and for any warnings before Trump took the stage, for the time it took to remove the former president from the stage and for its preparation before the rally.
Amid the fallout, the agency’s head, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned from her position. Days later, the acting head of the Secret Service told a Senate committee hearing that Secret Service agents could be fired if they were found to have broken protocol that day.
Gabe Gutiérrez contributed.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
