Multiple witnesses say they saw Donald Trump’s suspected shooter climbing on the roof of a Pennsylvania building moments before shots were fired at the former president during a campaign rally Saturday.
Several rally attendees, speaking to media outlets in the aftermath of what being called a failed assassination attempt on Trump, said they even tried to alert police at the Butler, Pa., event before the shooter opened fire.
Easton Smith, who was outside of the rally’s security perimeter, told CBS affiliate WKBN that he saw a man climbing up to the building’s roof but “didn’t know what he was doing.”
Smith told the outlet that he and others nearby were “trying to alert cops and police there was a guy crawling on the roof,” when they spotted the suspected shooter’s rifle.
“After that, a couple shots fired off,” he said.
Another witness, Greg Smith, told BBC News that he also saw that the suspected shooter had crawled to the top of the building, which was located outside the event but had a straight view of the stage where Trump was speaking, backed by an audience of rally supporters.
He said he alerted police to the gunman but was confused when Trump carried on with his remarks.
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage’… the next thing you know, five shots ring out.”
Smith told the BBC that he first spotted the gunman about five minutes into Trump’s speech.
“We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away,” he said. “He had a rifle; we could clearly see a rifle.”
Smith told the outlet he saw Secret Service agents shoot the man and, moments later, “they crawled up on the roof, they had their guns pointed at him, made sure he was dead. He was dead, and that was it — it was over.”
Ben Macer told KDKA-TV he saw the gunman “move from roof to roof. (I) told an officer (the shooter) was on the roof.”
“When I turned around to go back to where I was, it was when the gunshots started, and then it was just chaos, and we all came running away, and that was that.”
Another witness, David James Stewart, told Axios he was trying to get a view of the rally after clocking off from his shift at a nearby convenience store and was standing right next to the building the shooter had scaled.
Stewart told the outlet that he was taking video at the time and turned his camera upward when the shooting started.
Following the shooting, authorities seized his video, he said, and he was taken by Homeland Security to a building for questioning. He claimed law enforcement told him that 18 witnesses were brought in and asked to share their recollections with local police and federal agents. It’s unclear how many witnesses at the rally were actually questioned — and how many will be questioned by authorities in the days and weeks to come.
The Secret Service said it killed the suspected shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue.
As shots rang out, the former president huddled underneath the podium while his protective detail surrounded him. Trump grabbed his ear before ducking behind the podium. When he finally stood up, face bloodied, he gave a defiant upraised fist to the crowd as he was ushered offstage by his security detail.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.
One attendee was killed and two spectators were critically injured, authorities said. All were identified as men.
President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, was briefed on the incident and spoke to Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said.
“There’s no place in America for this type of violence,” the president said in public remarks. “It’s sick. It’s sick.”
Trump called Sunday for unity and resilience as shocked leaders across the political divide reacted to the shooting.
— With files from The Associated Press