Witnesses tried to warn security officers at least 86 seconds before the shooter opened fire on Donald Trump, killing one person and wounding two others, according to footage from Butler County on Saturday. Some of the people at Trump’s rally had noticed a suspect on a rooftop near the stage. Footage of a chaotic scene in which they began calling out to police, “Officer! Officer!” and directing at least one officer – who, according to the badge analysis, is assigned to the town’s police force – to the rooftop, confirms their accounts. A woman says, “He’s on the rooftop.” A police officer then looks toward the rooftop. The shooter begins shooting two minutes and two seconds into the newly released video, which begins with a man’s voice saying people were pointing to the rooftop of Agr International, a company that manufactures industrial equipment. The gunfire begins 86 seconds following the first recorded attempt to alert police. The Agr warehouse was not included in the security perimeter established by Secret Service agents to protect Trump. Beyond the perimeter, it was up to the city and county police to provide security but according to a plan approved by the Security Service.
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Witness Ben Maser, a 41-year-old welder who lives near Butler and was just outside the security perimeter, told the Washington Post that he reported seeing a suspicious-looking man on the roof of the warehouse twice within two minutes. According to his reconstruction, the warning occurred 30 seconds before the video. The officer “didn’t respond at all” on both occasions. The first time, when the assailant was crouching down, the second time when the man was lying down. Another witness, Greg Smith, explained to the BBC that he tried for “two or three minutes” to alert police of the assailant’s presence, following seeing him climb onto the roof of the building with a rifle.
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2024-07-18 04:12:08