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Texts Reveal SWAT Spotted Trump Gunman 90 Minutes Before Shooting
Members of a local SWAT team at the scene the day former President Donald Trump was shot spoke out for the first time Monday, citing communication failures with the Secret Service but acknowledging that “we all failed that day.”
“I remember standing in the parking lot talking to one of the guys” after the July 13 shooting, Mike Priolo, a member of the Beaver County, Pennsylvania, SWAT team, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” (GMA). “We just became part of history. And not in a good way.”
Also Monday, ABC News reported obtaining text messages indicating that would-be gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks drew the attention of a sniper more than 90 minutes before the shooting began on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show. That is more than a half hour earlier than previously reported.
A sniper leaving the area where local SWAT members assembled texted the others that he saw Crooks “sitting to the direct right on a picnic table about 50 yards from the exit.” He also texted that Crooks saw him leave the area with a rifle “so he knows you guys are up there.”
About an hour before the shooting, sniper team member Gregory Nicol told GMA he saw Crooks take a rangefinder from his pocket. Though rangefinders were not banned from rallies, Nicol took Crooks’ picture and called in a warning of a suspicious presence.
He was looking up and down the building, Nicol said. It just seemed out of place.
Crooks opened fire shortly after 6 p.m., killing rally attendee Corey Comperatore, 50, wounding Trump in the ear and critically injuring two other men. A Secret Service sniper on another roof fatally shot Crooks, authorities say.
Trump to cooperate with shooting probe
Trump has agreed to sit for a standard interview “consistent with any victim interview we do,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said during a media briefing with reporters. Rojek said the FBI wants Trump’s perspective of what happened.
FBI officials said they had yet to identify a motive for Crooks, the gunman. But they said he had conducted online searches into prior mass shooting events, improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of the Slovakian prime minister in May.
Texts Reveal SWAT Snipers Spotted Trump Rally Gunman 2 Hours Before Attempt
A local SWAT sniper noticed the suspected gunman at former President Donald Trump’s deadly campaign rally earlier than previously known, according to text messages obtained by News.
On July 13, in what authorities have said was an assassination attempt, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one spectator, critically injuring two others and leaving Trump bleeding from his right ear. At 4:26 p.m. — nearly two hours before the shooting began — a sniper leaving the area where local SWAT members assembled saw Crooks “sitting to the direct right on a picnic table about 50 yards from the exit,” the text message said.
The obtained text messages were shared among snipers in the American Glass Research (AGR) building area, which was being used as a staging area for local police, who were inside the structure. The sniper who alerted others that Crooks was lurking in the area noted Crooks was likely aware of the snipers’ position, writing, “because you see me go out with my rifle and put it in my car, so he knows you guys are up there.”
Less than an hour later, as News previously reported, a member of that same sniper team identified Crooks as suspicious — and shortly after that, called it into local command, warning of the suspicious presence. In their first public comments since the assassination attempt, the Beaver County SWAT team on the ground that day and their supervisors spoke exclusively with News Senior Investigative Correspondent Aaron Katersky.
It is the first time any key law enforcement personnel on-site on July 13 have offered first-hand accounts of what occurred.
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