A video obtained by CNN for the first time shows the moment a police officer climbed to the rooftop of a building overlooking a Donald Trump rally on July 13 and witnessed the shooter targeting the former president. According to CNN, the footage from the body camera of a Butler Township police officer in Pennsylvania shows how a colleague lifted him to the roof, then quickly descended upon seeing the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
About 40 seconds later, Crooks turned and fired eight shots at Trump, hitting him in the ear. Moments later, a sniper from the Secret Service shot and killed Crooks. After the confrontation, the officer ran to another side of the building before rushing to his own vehicle to retrieve a rifle. The officer who saw Crooks told another officer, "He got too close to me; he turned towards me."
One officer asked where the shooter was, and the officer, panting, replied, "He's in place."
The video also documents additional footage from the Republican rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which CNN obtained showing "local officers lamenting that they had asked Secret Service personnel to deploy officers near the building from which the gunman had fired a few days prior."
Butler Township Police initially withheld the video content but changed their decision after CNN appealed. American media revealed unexpected new details about the shooter, Thomas Crooks, 20, who attempted to assassinate the former president.
The New York Post reported that Thomas tried to join the shooting team at his Bethel Park high school but was rejected for "making inappropriate jokes and for shooting terribly," as indicated by two of his former classmates. Crooks was killed by Secret Service agents after firing an AR-style rifle at Trump, hitting him in the right ear, while one person was killed and two others were critically injured.
Earlier reports stated that Thomas Crooks had no criminal history, and authorities have not yet determined a motive for his attempted assassination of Trump. Multiple federal agencies are currently involved in the investigation, and law enforcement officials are treating the shooting as an assassination attempt.
