Even though local police were on the lookout for a suspicious man, critical minutes ticked by, allowing a would-be assassin to slip past, a Times analysis found.
About an hour before a gunman let loose a volley of bullets that nearly assassinated a former president, the law enforcement contingent in Butler, Pennsylvania, was on the verge of a great policing success.
Among the thousands of people streaming in to cheer former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally Saturday (Sunday NZ time), local officers spotted one skinny young man acting oddly and notified other law enforcement. The Secret Service, too, was informed, through radio communication. The suspicious man did not appear to have a weapon.
Remarkably, law enforcement had found the right man — Thomas Matthew Crooks, a would-be assassin, though officers did not know that at the time. Then they lost track of him.
Twenty minutes before violence erupted, a sniper, from a distance, spotted Crooks again and took his picture.
As time slipped away, at least two local officers were pulled from traffic detail to help search for the man. But the Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting Trump, did not stop him from taking the stage. Eight minutes after Trump started to speak, Crooks fired off bullets that left the Republican presidential nominee bloodied and a rally visitor dead.
The call to let the rally go ahead while law enforcement looked for a potentially dangerous person is one of many Secret Service decisions now being called into question. The agency is also under scrutiny for allowing a building within a rifle’s range to be excluded from its secure perimeter, creating a blind spot close to the former president that the gunman exploited.
“I am appalled to learn that the Secret Service knew about a threat prior to President Trump walking onstage,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., posted Wednesday on the social platform X, after a private briefing with the Secret Service and the FBI.
Multiple investigations into the lapses are underway, including one announced by President Joe Biden on Sunday. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the shooting, which killed one rally visitor and hospitalised two others, a security failure, though he has said Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle still has his support.
Cheatle in an interview with ABC News said she takes full responsibility.
Even as investigators continue to examine what happened, it is already clear that there were multiple missed opportunities to stop Crooks before the situation turned deadly. This account is based on video footage from the rally and statements from numerous federal officials, local law enforcement officers in Butler and members of Congress who were briefed by the FBI and the Secret Service.
On July 8, an advance team walked the site, the Butler Farm Show grounds, to assess a security threat. Agents worked with local law enforcement and explained what the Secret Service would handle and what law enforcement would be expected to do. Crucially, the Secret Service decided that a group of warehouses to the north of the stage would be excluded from the security zone, despite being only about 135 metres from Trump’s podium. That was within a rifle’s range.
That meant the warehouses were assigned to local law enforcement to secure. The Secret Service and the local police had treated the complex of warehouses just north of the rally site as an observation post. It was considered a place from which to watch Trump’s crowd — not a place that needed to be watched, itself.
But that created a blind spot, outside the security perimeter but well within rifle range of Trump. It was exploited by a gunman with no military training and little subtlety, who showed up early and acted oddly enough that police photographed him and distributed his picture, though with no weapon in view.
“I don’t know whose responsibility that building was,” Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said. “But somebody should have been there.”
It was also unclear how long in advance Crooks had prepared. Trump announced his rally in Butler on July 3.
But in the aftermath, when the FBI was able to finally access Crooks’ cellphones and other electronic devices, agents could see that he had searched for images of Trump as well as Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and even FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Crooks also had typed in “major depressive disorder” and searched for dates and places for appearances for both Biden and Trump.
One of Trump’s planned appearances happened to be about 80km from Crooks’ house in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
On Friday, the day before the attempted assassination, Crooks went to a shooting range, according to an investigative summary prepared by the FBI. The next morning, he bought a ladder at a Home Depot and then later that day he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition from a gun shop near his home, according to the FBI document and federal law enforcement officials.
In his car, a Hyundai Sonata, Crooks brought an AR-15-style rifle, bought by his father more than a decade earlier. And he brought two homemade bombs, in which a potentially explosive mixture of fertiliser and fuel was packed inside empty ammunition cans that were roughly the size of a toolbox.
The bombs were fitted with a remote-control receiver — the type typically used to set off fireworks displays remotely — according to another federal government report seen by The New York Times. The report said the bombs appeared designed to be set off by a remote control. He brought that, too.
Trump’s rally in Butler was supposed to start at 5pm, though Trump did not go onstage for another hour after that. Video obtained by Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV appears to show that Crooks was there by at least 5:06pm.
The video suggests that Crooks walked around in front of the warehouse building he would eventually use as a sniper’s perch. He appeared unarmed and unhurried, looking toward the rally site with a hand in his pocket.
The officer took a photo of him and circulated it around officers at the rally. The official said that local officers tried to follow the suspicious man but lost track.
It was about 20 minutes before the shooting.
At some point, Crooks climbed onto the roof of a warehouse, building No. 6 of a complex of interconnected corrugated-metal buildings used by an equipment company, AGR International.
The location had obvious advantages to a would-be sniper: a clear, elevated line of sight toward the stage where Trump would stand. Cheatle said no officers were stationed on the roof itself because of safety concerns arising from the roof’s slope.
There were conflicting accounts of how Crooks got up to the roof. A Secret Service spokesperson said Wednesday that he had climbed up to the roof on his own, perhaps by using an air conditioner. Federal investigators believe that he did not use a ladder even though Crooks had bought one that morning.
At 6:03pm Trump appeared, waving to the cheering crowd. Six minutes later, with Trump now energetically speaking onstage, witnesses noticed Crooks crawling into position on the roof. They alerted local officers, who patrolled the area outside the Secret Service’s perimeter.
It was two minutes before the shooting.
Onstage, Trump continued speaking, seemingly unaware.
But around him, the Secret Service contingent frantically began to respond, shifting its focus from scanning the crowd to scanning the area north of the security perimeter. The sprawling warehouse complex just to the north — the blind spot — was now everyone’s focus.
On a barn directly behind Trump, a Secret Service countersniper team quickly clambered from one side of the peaked roofs to the other. Now, they pointed their rifles at the warehouse about 135 metres to Trump’s right.
Crooks was on the warehouse roof, but it is unclear if the Secret Service countersnipers could see him. A Times visual analysis showed that the view for these snipers was likely blocked by the gentle peak of the warehouse’s roof.
Crooks was still hidden, low-crawling up the other side.
On the ground, officers from the small Butler Township Police Department had been assigned to direct traffic near the warehouse. According to a social media post from Butler Township Commissioner Edward Natali, at least two of the officers left their traffic posts to help look for the suspicious person.
Two officers went to the warehouse, and one officer boosted the other up, so that his head was above the roofline. He and Crooks saw each other. Crooks “turned his firearm,” Natali wrote, but the officer could not fire back: He was holding onto the roof with both hands.
The officer fell backward and was injured, Natali wrote.
Crooks reached the peak of the warehouse roof, high enough to see over the top. A witness on the ground yelled: “He’s on the roof! He’s got a gun!”
Then time was up. Crooks fired his rifle eight times, according to a Times analysis of audio from the scene. His first shot appeared to graze Trump, bloodying his right ear. Two other rallygoers were injured, and a 50-year-old retired firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was killed.
Afterward, a Secret Service sniper on the south barn killed Crooks with one shot. A local police officer in another part of the area also fired at him, but it was unclear if his bullet struck Crooks, according to the Butler County district attorney.
When police reached Crooks’ body on the roof, he had no identification on him. Officers traced the serial number on his rifle to his father. In his pocket, he carried a remote control to the bombs in his car.
It was not clear if he had tried to use it or if the bombs were made well enough to explode.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: David A. Fahrenthold, Glenn Thrush, Campbell Robertson, Adam Goldman and Aric Toler
Photographs by: Doug Mills, Eric Lee, and Kristian Thacker
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
