Before a would-be assassin took aim at Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, local police officers notified the former president’s Secret Service detail that they were looking for a suspicious person in the area, a U.S. official told NBC News.
The suspicious person, later identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, was first flagged to local police officers by rallygoers on their way into the event. The attendees reported they saw Crooks pacing and behaving strangely near the magnetometers, four officials told NBC News.
Local police officers began pursuing Crooks on foot, the officials said. During the pursuit, the U.S. official said, local police told the Secret Service they were looking for a suspicious person near the event.
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It is not clear what time the Secret Service was notified and whether it was before Trump took the stage on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show, a venue roughly 36 miles north of Pittsburgh. The U.S. official said the Secret Service was told of a suspicious person before local police discovered Crooks on the roof of a nearby glass research company’s building. That discovery occurred shortly before Crooks opened fire, according to two law enforcement sources.
The timing raises questions about whether other measures could have been taken to stop Crooks.
In the wake of the shooting, a Secret Service spokesman said the location of the roof fell outside the Secret Service’s central security perimeter and was the primary responsibility of local law enforcement. The spokesman said it is common for the Secret Service to coordinate with local law enforcement agencies.
Current and former Secret Service officials told NBC News that, ultimately, responsibility for the security of the agency’s protectees lies with the Secret Service. The former officials said the agency identified the roof where Crooks fired his rifle toward Trump as a potential vulnerability before Trump took the stage.
Two former Secret Service agents said the agency could have deployed plainclothes countersurveillance agents to stop the gunman.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, said an independent review panel, announced Monday, will ultimately determine what led to the failure to prevent the assassination attempt.
“Director Kimberly Cheatle has been working with the secretary [of homeland security] and the White House on the development of the independent review panel,” Guglielmi said. “She will ensure they have the necessary authority and ability to review the entirety of the incident including planning, resourcing and staffing.”
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to questions about the timeline of when they were notified of the threat.
Top lawmakers in Congress are demanding answers about the assassination attempt, requesting briefings and planning investigations. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Sunday on NBC’s “TODAY” show that “the American people need to know and deserve to know” about potential lapses in security.
The revelations about how law enforcement communicated before the shooting come amid growing evidence that at least half a dozen people who attended the rally were pointing to the gunman while he was on the roof getting in position to shoot, trying to alert law enforcement and fellow rallygoers of the imminent danger.
The gunman was crouched on the roof for at least two minutes before Trump was struck, according to an NBC News review of video clips. Videos posted to social media and attendees’ interviews with journalists show the mounting panic people felt as they understood the potential threat.
One 52-second video shows a group of rallygoers outside the perimeter of the open-air venue loudly announcing the gunman’s presence.
“There he is, right there,” the man who apparently recorded the video says as he points upward, a blurry finger briefly covering the lens. “Right there, see him? He’s laying down, see him?”
Seconds later, someone off-camera can be heard shouting what sounds like a warning to police: “Officer!”
Trump can be heard on loudspeakers talking about “dangerous people” and “criminals” coming through the southern U.S. border as a woman yells: “He’s on the roof!” The woman keeps yelling: “He’s right here! He’s right on the roof!” Then the video ends.
Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service and homeland security agent who is now an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said one key question will be what happened in the minutes after rallygoers warned police about Crooks.
“There needed to be clear communication to counter-snipers after the kid was spotted,” Cangelosi said. “But was there communication between police officers and Secret Service? These are answers we need to find out.”
In another video posted on social media, Trump can be heard talking about border security statistics displayed on a screen as some attendees start yelling: “He’s got a gun!”
Rally spectator Greg Smith told the BBC that just a few minutes into Trump’s speech, he noticed a man clearly armed with a rifle “bear-crawling up the roof,” roughly 50 feet away from where he was standing. Smith, who was outside the rally’s security perimeter, said he pointed at the shooter for “two or three minutes” and tried to alert law enforcement.
“The police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle,’” Smith told the British broadcaster. “The police were like, ‘Huh, what?’ — like they didn’t know what was going on. We’re like, ‘Right here on the roof. We can see him from right here. We can see him. He’s crawling.’”
He said Secret Service agents on a nearby roof seemed to see them pointing but might not have been able to see Crooks because of the slope of the roof he was on.
Smith recognized there was a threat to the rally, and his mind started racing. “I’m thinking to myself: Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?”
“Next thing you know,” Smith went on to say, “five shots ring out.”
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
- Investigators still trying to determine motive more than a day after assassination attempt on Trump
- Trump says he was 'supposed to be dead' after attempted assassination at Pennsylvania rally
- Clarence Thomas signaled how he might rule on a challenge to Trump special counsel. Would other justices follow?
