More details are starting to emerge about what happened on Saturday when a gunman tried to kill former President Donald Trump.
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U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News that Thomas Matthew Crooks was identified as a “potential person of suspicion,” but by the time they found him, he was shooting at the former president.
The building where Crooks was perched was outside of the secure area, The Washington Post reported.
Trump was wounded, one rally attendee was killed and two others were wounded.
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Initially, Cheatle did not speak about the shooting, but did send a memo to agents on Sunday praising their quick action to move the former president to safety after shots rang out, the newspaper reported.
Cheatle said that local law enforcement saw a man carrying a range finder about 30 minutes before shots rang out at the political rally at the Butler County Fairgrounds in Western Pennsylvania.
The officer told state police about the suspicious person but says there was discussion about whether the range finder was binoculars for seeing the rally better.
“I’m being told that the shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion. Units started responding to seek that individual out,” Cheatle said. “Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.”
Still, members of the crowd were trying to alert law enforcement about a person on the roof of the building. It was about a minute and a half before Crooks started firing.
In one video , a man can be heard yelling, “Officer! Officer!” A woman says, “He’s on the roof!” An officer is seen looking at the top of the building, The Washington Post reported.
Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe told the newspaper that a local member of law enforcement confronted Crooks before the shooting. The officer pulled himself onto the roof to check out the reports but was not able to get his own gun because he was holding on to the edge. He had to drop down when Crooks aimed his gun at the officer, Slupe said.
Crooks then started firing on the crowd, the sheriff said.
Cheatle said that ultimately, she is responsible for what happened Saturday.
“The buck stops with me,” Cheatle told ABC News . “This is an event that should have never happened.” She also said, “It’s something that shouldn’t happen again.”
She said that the agency knew of the security vulnerability of the building where Crooks was situated, but a decision was made to not put anyone on top of it. Instead, there were security personnel inside.
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“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside,” she told ABC News .
The people inside were local members of law enforcement, not members of the Secret Service.
“In this particular instance, we did share support for that particular site and that the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter,” Cheatle told ABC News . “And then we sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter. There was local police in that building -- there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”
William Bellis, the chief financial officer of Agr International, the building where Crooks was located, said the company worked with local police on security before the rally and that the company’s parking lot was blocked to the public by law enforcement, the Post reported.
Bellis said getting on the roof was not easy, and that a ladder would be needed.
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CNN cited law enforcement in reporting that Crooks bought a 5-foot ladder at a Home Depot on Saturday morning before he went to a gun store, where he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition. He then drove an hour north of his hometown of Bethel Park in suburban Pittsburgh to the Butler County Fair Grounds. It is not known if the ladder and ammunition were used in Saturday’s shooting.
Cheatle has pledged not to resign from her role as the head of the Secret Service, but will testify before the House Oversight Committee on July 22.
President Joe Biden has ordered an “independent review” of the rally’s security, while Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also called for an investigation saying that the event was a security “failure,” the Post reported.
Law enforcement still does not have a motive for the assassination attempt.
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