The footage, posted to social media late Sunday night, shows multiple witnesses shouting and directing at least one police officer to the roof of a nearby business. Authorities say 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Trump and those inside the building from the roof before being killed by police.
In the new video, a man shouts, “Officer! Officer!” while others point to the building. “He’s on the roof!” says one woman. The video also shows a police officer in a black uniform looking up at the top of the building.
Mounting evidence that police knew about Crooks before he opened fire has put pressure on the Secret Service to explain what analysts have described as a major security lapse. After Crooks fired into the rally, Trump was wounded, two members of the public were injured and one was killed.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle sent a memo to her agents on Sunday praising their swift efforts to get Trump to safety after shots were fired. President Biden also said Sunday that he had ordered an “independent investigation” into security at the rally. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday reiterated that call for an independent investigation, calling the attempted assassination a “failure” of security.
Crooks began shooting two minutes and two seconds into the newly released video, which begins with a male voice telling people to point to the roof, according to a Washington Post analysis of footage from the event. The shots began 86 seconds after the first audible attempts to alert police, according to the analysis, which synced several clips based on the sound of Trump’s voice through the public address system as he addressed supporters at a farm showground in Butler County, Pa.
The new video supports previously reported statements from other witnesses, who said in interviews with The Post and other media that they had alerted police that a man had climbed onto the roof of the business, Agr International, manufacturer of industrial equipment.
The Agr building was not in the secured area guarded by the Secret Service, where people had to go through a metal detector before they were allowed in.
While Secret Service agents monitored the event from the secured area, police officers from local township and county departments were assigned to secure the outer perimeter, The Post reported. Officials said it was common for the Secret Service to give local police this responsibility, but that plans for securing the perimeter are structured and signed off by the Secret Service and ultimately become part of the Secret Service’s overall security plan for the event.
The uniform and department insignia worn by the officer in the new video appear to match those of the Butler Township Police Department. The department, which local and state officials said had personnel at the event, did not respond to questions from The Post.
Ben Maser, who watched the event from just outside the security perimeter, told The Post that he twice reported seeing a suspicious-looking man on the roof of the building within a two-minute period to a police officer. Maser, who confirmed that he is visible in the newly surfaced video clip, said he first alerted the officer about 30 seconds before the time period captured in the video.
The officer “didn’t say anything” to Maser in response to both warnings, he said. The first time, when Maser saw the man on the roof moving forward in a crouched position, the officer looked toward the building, Maser said. The second time, when the man was lying down, Maser said he advised the officer to move to a spot where he could see the man.
“When I turned around to go back to that spot, I heard gunshots and then it was chaos,” said Maser, a 41-year-old welder who lives near the event venue.
Maser said he never saw a gun on the man on the roof, and the newly surfaced video does not show a gun either.
Another witness, Greg Smith, told BBC News that he and others outside the security perimeter tried to alert police to Crooks for “two or three minutes” after they saw him crawl onto the roof of Agr with a rifle. Smith said he was shocked that Trump was not removed from the stage before shots rang out.
“The police are down there running around on the ground,” Smith said. “We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a gun.’ And the police are like, ‘Huh? What?’ like they didn’t know what was going on.”
Smith did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.
Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe told The Post that a local police officer confronted Crooks before the shooting. It was not immediately clear whether that officer was the one surveying the building in the newly emerged video footage.
The officer pulled himself onto the roof to check for reports of a suspicious man, Slupe said. But the officer, unable to retrieve a gun because he was holding onto the edge of the roof, had to drop down when the gunman pointed his weapon at him, the sheriff said.
“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said. The gunman then began shooting at the rally site, the sheriff said.
An executive at Agr International, which makes quality control equipment for the bottling industry, told The Post that the company had worked with local police on security matters before the event. Police blocked off public access to the company’s parking lot, and that space was available for police use, said William Bellis, the company’s chief financial officer.
Bellis said there was no easy way to get to the roof of Agr’s building. “If they were on the roof, they would have needed a ladder,” he said shortly after the shooting Saturday. Aerial footage from after the incident that evening showed a ladder leaning against the building. It’s not clear when it was placed there.
Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.