Gunman in Donald Trump shooting ‘hid rifle near rally ground’
Donald Trump’s would-be assassin hid his rifle and scouted the rally location well before the shooting, and was initially barred from entry, says the Secret Service.
Donald Trump’s would-be assassin scouted the location and hidden his rifle near the site of the rally ground well before the shooting last Saturday, according to the US Secret Service in its first account of the incident.
Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, told Fox News that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was not identified as a “threat” until he was spotted with a AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on a roof of a building overlooking Mr Trump’s position at the podium.
He had tried to enter the rally with a rangefinder, typically used by marksmen to determine the distance of a target, but was turned away after metal detectors sounded an alert.
He was deemed “suspicious” and a “person of interest” but not a “threat”, Mr Guglielmi said.
The “threat” label was not applied until Crooks was observed armed on the roof, he said.
Critics have pointed to an apparent 19-minute gap between when Crooks was identified as suspicious and when the first shot was fired.
Republican senators confronted Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, at the party’s convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, accusing the agency of not providing answers over its handling of the security breach.
They called on her to step down over the worst lapse of security in recent US history. “You put him within less than an inch of his life,” John Barrasso, a Republican senator for Wyoming, told Ms Cheatle, presenting her with two options: “Resignation or full explanation.”
Ms Cheatle was seen trying to evade the group before being pursued through the corridors and into the lavatory, in a video posted online by Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee senator.
The Times
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