Donald Trump shooting: How did a 20-year-old hoodwink US Secret Service?

The shocking assassination attempt of former United States president Donald Trump has raised questions about his security. A 20-year-old gunman got close enough to fire multiple shots at the Republican presidential candidate on Saturday (July 13) at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

While the bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, the incident triggered doubts about how it could happen in the first place. The US Secret Service, which is tasked with protecting the former president, shot and killed the suspected attacker identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

How close was the shooter to Trump? Why did the Secret Service fail to stop the attack? Let’s understand.

Where was Trump’s shooter?

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the gunman fired at Trump from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue”.

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The shooter armed with an AR-style rifle was seen lying on his stomach on a rooftop, AFP reported citing a video published by US outlet TMZ.

As per CNN, the building rooftop where the attacker was present was just outside Trump’s rally venue. At least three shots were fired within minutes of the Republican leader starting his speech.

Trump, who said the bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear”, was rushed off the stage with blood on his face. The would-be assassin killed one attendee at the rally and injured two others.

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According to Bill Pickle, the former special agent in charge of Al Gore’s vice-presidential Secret Service detail, “And within a second of the moment this kid opened fire, the CS (counter-sniper) guy shot him,” reported Business Insider (BI).

The rooftop where the gunman shot at the former US president was quite close to where Trump was speaking.

An Associated Press (AP) analysis found that the shooter’s body with a bloody wound to his head was lying on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, the venue of Trump’s rally. This roof was just 150 metres from where the Republican presidential candidate was standing.

US Secret Service faces questions

The US Secret Service is under scanner over Trump’s assassination attempt as this is the agency’s biggest failure in over four decades.

One of the foremost questions is – how did the shooter get on the rooftop without being noticed by security personnel?

Speaking to CNN, Steve Moore, a retired FBI supervisory special agent, said the rooftop from where the suspected shooter fired at Trump should have been guarded.

He said “the fact that somebody allowed that roof to be unmonitored, unguarded” might have been a flaw in planning or execution.

Two law enforcement officials told AP that personnel from the Secret Service’s counter-sniper team and counterassault team were present at Trump’s rally.

Timothy McCarthy, a former agent who retired from the agency in 1994, said the Secret Service “better be doing a deep dive into what happened there and doing whatever it takes to figure it out”, questioning how the shooter got on that rooftop in the first place.

“How did that person get up on that building? How did that happen? I mean, that’s the key to the entire thing. And what measures were put in place to prevent it?” he was quoted as saying by AP.

Speaking to NBC News, two sources familiar with the Secret Service’s operations said that the agency identified the building in question as a potential vulnerability days ahead of the event.

“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” one of the sources, a former senior Secret Service agent, said.

ALSO READ: Will the shooting create a ‘Trump Bump’ in the 2024 US presidential elections?

How Trump’s attacker hoodwink the Secret Service

According to Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the agency worked with local law enforcement to manage the security at the rally. He said sniper teams were also stationed on rooftops to identify and eliminate threats. However, the building used by the attacker was not guarded, which was outside the event’s security perimeter, as per the NBC News report.

Guglielmi said the rooftop in question was considered under the jurisdiction of the local law enforcement. But Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said the Secret Service was responsible for security outside the rally venue, the report added.

After the shooting, a witness outside the rally told BBC News that he saw the suspect climb up a roof and tried to notify the police. “We noticed the guy crawling, bear crawling, up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet (15.24 metres) away from us,” he said.

There are also questions about whether the Secret Service agents missed Crooks on the rooftop, failing to identify him as a potential threat. But if they did notice him, was it possible for them to take him out before he fired?

Speaking to Business Insider, Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent who worked on protective details for US presidential candidates, said even if the counter-snipers had seen the gunman before, they may not always “have the ability to act immediately”.

“You either have to make a decision: ‘Do I take a shot? Or do I not take a shot?’” Cangelosi said.

“What if you find out, ‘Oh, I just killed a 20-year-old kid who loves the protectee, and he couldn’t get in the venue, and he just wanted to get up on that roof?’ No one wants to be in that position,” he added.

Pickle, the former special agent, explained that factors like lack of enough counter-snipers at the venue, the hot weather and the gunman hiding in plain sight could have resulted in the agents losing crucial seconds. “The CS (counter-sniper) guys would probably say we were up there for four hours in 100-degree heat, and if we had another team up here or drone support this wouldn’t have happened,” he told BI.

According to Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent who has worked on Secret Service details, the agency did a good job in neutralising the gunman after he fired the shots but he said not securing the rooftop was “a tremendous lapse.”

“The only way to stop that is you have a lot of people, you get there first, and you command the high ground,” Cavanaugh told NBC News. “This is basic, and the Secret Service has done it for years successfully, so I’m really surprised that they did not have that high ground covered.”

The FBI has launched a probe into the shooting, partnering with the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement. With the world’s eyes on the investigation, only time will tell what went wrong and to which extent.

With inputs from agencies