A witness has described the unfathomable security lapse that led up to the apparent shooting attempt on Donald Trump at a rally Saturday evening, saying he repeatedly tried to alert cops to the existence of a rifle-wielding man on a rooftop just outside the event.
The unnamed man told BBC that he was having a party outside the rally and was planning to walk up through a nearby field and listen to Trump when he started speaking. But as he was walking up, about five minutes into Trump’s speech, “We noticed a guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us.”
The man clearly had a rifle, the witness said, so he started trying to alert nearby cops and Secret Service agents who were stationed on the ground and on the roof of a barn.
“We’re pointing at the guy crawling up the roof… the police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police were like, ‘Huh, right.’ They didn’t know what was going on.”
The man said his group kept trying to flag down law enforcement with little success.
“Next thing you know, I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?’ I’m standing there pointing at [the gunman] for, you know, two or three minutes. The Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I’m pointing at the roof, just standing here like this…. Next thing you know, five shots came out.”
The witness estimated the shooter was on the roof, in plain view, for at least three to four minutes before opening fire. He said it’s possible that the agents on top of the barn and on the ground couldn’t see the man because of the way the roof was sloped.
“Why aren’t there Secret Service on all the roofs?” he asked, seeming incredulous. “This is not a big place.”
Once shots were fired, the witness said he saw agents “blew his head off.”
Footage circulating on social media from other witnesses corroborated the man’s account, showing the suspected shooter lying motionless on the roof.
The Butler county district attorney confirmed to the Associated Press that one person attending the rally was killed, along with the shooter.
Trump appeared to be hit in the ear by an unknown object as he was speaking. He was taken to a medical facility to be checked but was “fine,” his spokesperson said.
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