(Reuters) – Soon after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, local law enforcement officers and a U.S. Secret Service agent discussed how pictures of the shooter were shared among officers by a sniper who lost sight of him before he opened fire, a newly released video showed.
The three-minute video was recorded on the body-worn camera of an officer from the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit who was at the Trump campaign rally on July 13 in the rural western Pennsylvania town of Butler, and released on Tuesday by U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley.
The video shows local law enforcement officers and the Secret Service agent on a roof near the shooter’s body about an hour after the attack discussing how photos of the gunman, 20-year-old nursing-home aide Thomas Crooks, were shared among law enforcement officers by a sniper who lost sight of Crooks before the shooting.
It was unclear from the video how long before the shooting the pictures of Crooks were circulated.
Crooks’ bleeding body can be seen a few steps away from the officers on the roof. One of the officers gestures to a semi-automatic rifle near the body.
Crooks was able to crawl across the roof overlooking Trump’s rally and fire eight bullets from a semi-automatic rifle before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper on top of another building, according to law enforcement accounts. Crooks killed one man in the crowd and seriously wounded two others. Trump was wounded in his right ear.
Crooks’ motive remains unclear. He registered as a Republican soon after turning 18. Before the attack, his internet search history shows him researching how Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, whose agency is responsible for the safety of U.S. presidents and other senior officials, resigned on Tuesday after her own congressional hearing.
Trump, who served as president from 2016 to 2020, is seeking to be returned to the White House in November’s election.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Donna Bryson and Daniel Wallis)
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