Two law enforcement officers left their station inside a building that overlooked a rooftop near a Donald Trump rally just minutes before a gunman climbed onto it and attempted to assassinate the former president, the head of the Pennsylvania State Police said on Tuesday.
The pair of SWAT-trained officers, both members of the local Butler Emergency Services Unit, were the first to identify Thomas Matthew Crooks as suspicious, Colonel Christopher Paris testified before the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the Associated Press.
Crooks, 20, stood out because he “was milling about and he stood out to them because he never made his way to a point of ingress to the venue,” Paris said, according to NBC News.
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The suspicions of the ESU officers in the area, who had “a text thread going,” according to Paris, was heightened after Crooks was spotted looking through a range-finder, a tool used by hunters to judge long-distance shots.
At that point, they sent a call and a text to state police, who “verbally turned right around and gave it to the Secret Service,” the commissioner added. The alert included photos of Crooks snapped by a local sniper.
The warning was relayed roughly 20 to 25 minutes before the shooting, according to Paris. A photo of Crooks taken by the local snipers was also sent up the chain of command.
After flagging him, the two ESU officers abandoned their post to go search for the would-be assassin on the ground “alongside other local officers in the immediacy,” Paris said. He was unable to provide an exact timeline of their movements.
The state police commissioner also said he wasn’t sure whether the two officers would have had a clear shot at Crooks on the rooftop from their position. But a video of the site shown at the hearing indicated that they would have, The Hill reported.
State authorities were told by the Secret Service during a walkthrough of the area on July 11 that the Butler County Emergency Services Unit would be responsible for securing the building where Crooks set up to take his shots, Paris said.
A dumbfounded Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) called Paris’ remarks “revelatory,” according to the outlet, and later said that the Secret Service had engineered a “colossal failure.”
Crooks opened fire on the July 13 rally shortly after the two officers left their post, bloodying Trump’s ear, killing one attendee, and critically wounding two other people who are expected to survive.
Investigators believe that Crooks fired eight rounds before he was killed by counter-snipers, according to Paris.
“Eight casings have been recovered,” he said, according to CNN. Officials previously only disclosed that “multiple” rounds had been fired.
The hearing was still in progress when Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle announced her resignation. She’d faced intense pressure to step down in the wake of the shooting, which has been criticized by lawmakers as a near-total security failure.
Cheatle had been been grilled for nearly five hours on Capitol Hill the day prior. Her lackluster performance left lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee frustrated.
“It was all secret and no service,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) commented. “She answered none of the questions that the American people have.”
On Tuesday evening, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released graphic bodycam footage confirming that local law enforcement had spotted—then lost track of—Crooks in the minutes before gunfire broke out.
The footage, in which the blurred outline of Crooks’ lifeless body can be seen, shows a Secret Service agent standing on the roof with a Beaver County Emergency Services Unit officer.
“I believe the sniper that seen [him] and sent the pictures is right inside of there,” the ESU officer says, pointing at an adjacent building. “... He’s the one that sent the pictures. I don’t know if you got the same ones I did.”
“I think I did, yeah,” the agent replies.
