CNN
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An area police officer noticed the gunman on the rooftop throughout former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday however was unable to have interaction him, Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe informed CNN’s Pamela Brown on Sunday.
Slupe mentioned that Butler Township officers acquired calls a few suspicious individual outdoors the perimeter of the rally and went trying to discover that individual. The preliminary calls didn’t point out the suspicious individual had a gun, he mentioned.
In the course of the seek for the suspicious individual, officers with township police found that the gunman was on the roof, and one native officer hoisted one other to rise up to the ledge. The shooter circled, noticed the officer peering over and pointed his gun at him. The officer let go of the ledge to “take cowl” and save his personal life. The gunman then began firing from the rooftop. Trump, who says he was shot within the ear, was rushed offstage with blood on his face.
When requested if the general safety lapse that led to a gunman having a direct line of sight to Trump was a failure, Slupe mentioned it “clearly” was.
“That is being investigated and clearly on the finish of the day, we’re going to study one thing from it,” Slupe mentioned.
He went on to say the companies weren’t made conscious of intel or pink flags forward of the rally in Butler, which the Trump marketing campaign introduced on July 3.
A few week earlier than the rally, Slupe mentioned there was an enormous assembly at which the US Secret Service, state police, township police, bomb squads and different regulation enforcement entities mentioned roles and obligations.
“Everybody who had a possible function was in that assembly,” Slupe informed CNN.
There have been different conferences for safety preparations, however this was the one one Slupe was conscious of involving all regulation enforcement entities.
Slupe, who was positioned contained in the perimeter close to the firing line in the course of the rally, mentioned he didn’t suppose there was precise gunfire when he first heard the popping noises. He described turning round to see the place the noise was coming from and seeing {that a} rally attendee had been shot.
Had he identified there have been any threats of a gunman, Slupe mentioned, he would have achieved “the whole lot to cease him (Trump) from popping out.”