Witnesses claim that former President Donald Trump’s security guards were warned about a man with a gun on the roof “three or four minutes” before the shooting at a rally by Trump.
The man, who was outside the event, said he noticed a man with a rifle climbing onto a roof while Trump was on stage in Pennsylvania, and that he and his friends rushed to get police’s attention.
Minutes later, he claimed the gunman was still there and fired five times before the Secret Service “blew his head off.”
The report is likely to raise questions about security failings at the rally, where Trump, who is expected to officially become the Republican presidential nominee on Wednesday, was photographed bleeding from his ear.
A BBC interview in which a man outside the security perimeter claims to have seen the gunman before the shooting is absolutely astonishing. pic.twitter.com/vJpKZTxSAe
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) July 13, 2024
The incident, which left one spectator dead and another seriously injured, is being investigated as an assassination attempt and the gunman was shot dead by a sniper.
“We noticed a man crawling up onto the roof of the building next door, about 50 feet away from us,” an eyewitness wearing a “Trump 2020” hat told BBC News.
“So we were standing there, pointing. Pointing at the guy that came crawling up on the roof … he had a rifle. You can clearly see he has a rifle. That’s right.”
Shots rang out and the former president fell to the ground – Anna Moneymaker
He said he and his friends “pointed” at the man for “two or three minutes” but police did not respond.
“Police were running around on the ground,” a witness said. “We were like, ‘Hey, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle.’ The police were like, ‘What?’ They didn’t know what was going on.”
“We were like, ‘Hey, we’re up here on the roof, we can see him from here.’
“And the next thing I knew, I was like, ‘Why is Trump still talking? Why haven’t they taken him off the stage?’
“I stood there for a couple of minutes pointing at him. Secret Service was watching us… I pointed to the roof and just stood there… and the next thing I knew five gunshots rang out.”
One spectator was shot dead and another seriously injured – Rebecca Droke
Billionaire businessman Elon Musk, who has supported Trump’s candidacy, responded to the interview by saying on social media that “the director of the Secret Service and the leader of this security force should resign.”
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said security officials “may have been a little lax” and suggested they thought “this wouldn’t happen to a president or a former president.”
“he [the shooter] “I mean, he was off the field,” Goldinger told CNN, “so frankly, I don’t know how he got there, but he was off the field. I think we’ll have to figure out how he got there.”
Witnesses said Trump’s security guards may not have been able to see the shooter because of the sloped roof, but questioned why they didn’t just take up positions in the surrounding buildings.
“This isn’t a very big place… just a few buildings around here. Why doesn’t the Secret Service have them in every building?” he asked.
He continued, “They blew his head off. The Secret Service blew his head off. They crawled up on the roof, pointed their guns at him, made sure he was dead. He was dead. That was it. It was all over.”
Security agents grabbed Trump and escorted him to an armored vehicle – Gene J. Puskar
A witness said the shooter was wearing “subdued-toned, brownish clothing,” adding that he “saw the rifle whizzing by as he was trying to crawl.”
Unconfirmed footage circulating on social media, apparently taken outside the rally, shows a body dressed in light grey clothing lying on top of a low-hanging building.
The video shows the gunman firing an initial volley, followed immediately by louder gunfire, apparently as a police sniper stationed in a barn adjacent to the rally returned fire on the suspect.
The Secret Service confirmed in a statement that the gunman was “neutralized” after multiple shots were fired “from an elevated position” toward the rally’s stage.
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