Chilling footage shows Trump shooter walking through crowd
New video has shown the man who shot Donald Trump walking through a rally crowd less than two hours before he opened fire but the footage has thrown a timeline of events into doubt.
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Chilling new footage has shown attempted Donald Trump assassin Thomas Crooks walking through the former US President’s Pennsylvania rally crowd less than two hours before he fired shots at the Republican presidential nominee.
In the footage, filmed by Joe Tomko, owner of clothing company Iron Clad USA, Crooks is seen walking through a the assembled crowd, near a row of merchandise stalls.
“We were there just trying to sell our patriotic hats from my small business,” the company wrote in a TikTok video where they released the video.
“Captured a video of Thomas Matthew Crooks at 4:26pm, just before the assassination attempt occurred.”
The video was filmed at 4.26pm local time on July 13, about an hour and 40 minutes before the 20-year-old fired shots from a factory roof outside the rally, striking Mr Trump in the ear, killing one rally-goer and wounding two more.
This was exactly the same time a local police sniper texted his colleagues to say he had seen a man, believed to be Crooks, sitting at a picnic table nearby, throwing into doubt the police’s timeline of events.
Crooks was spotted by police and Secret Service agents several times before the shooting, but not stopped - a major security lapse that is under investigation.
Group texts between snipers from the surrounding counties put Crooks in a different location about the same time as the Iron Clad video.
Mr Tomko said he’d inadvertantly filmed Crooks and only found the video of while looking through footage, which had been taken from the rally.
“I was have breakfast with my parents and my father asked me if I ever looked through all my footage from that day,’ he said.‘So I watched it all late in the evening and I just about jumped out of my skin [when I saw him], I was in such disbelief,” he said.
In the footage, Crooks was alone and wearing the same clothing he was wearing when he was shot dead by the Secret Service agents.
The incident, which left bystander Corey Comperatore dead and injured David Dutch and James Copenhaver, shocked America and sparked a heated debate about security measures for high-profile political events.
Mr Trump sustained an ear injury during the attack, which occurred while he was addressing supporters at the rally. The Secret Service quickly neutralised the threat, fatally shooting Crooks as he fired from a nearby rooftop.
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Originally published as Chilling footage shows Trump shooter walking through crowd
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