Eyewitness Describes Man With Rifle Crawling Up Roof Near Trump Rally

Greg Smith did not get inside the Butler Farm Show grounds on July 13 for former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but he wanted to hear what the presumed GOP 2024 presidential nominee had to say, so he listened from outside.

From there, Mr. Smith, who is a local of Butler, said he witnessed the male shooter who fired rounds of shots into the rally, which struck the former president’s right ear and injured three rally attendees, killing one.

“I had a direct line of sight, directly to the backside of that roof. And I saw a guy crawling up the roof—bear-crawling up the roof—with a rifle,” Mr. Smith told The Epoch Times. He and his party saw the U.S. Secret Service nearby and tried to get their attention.

“We could see them looking at us. I stood there for about one or two minutes, pointing at the guy on the roof. And the police were running around, down and around the bottom of the building,” he said.

“And we were like, ‘Hey, man, there was a guy on the roof with a rifle.’ And the police were just running around, don’t know what they were doing. And the next thing you know, the guy crawled up to the peak and took about four shots. I don’t know how many shots it was exactly. That’s what we saw.”

He believes the Secret Service shot the same man that he saw.

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The Secret Service did report that it killed the suspected shooter who they described as having attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue.

The FBI, early on July 14, identified the man as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The agency said the investigation remains active and ongoing. The shooting is being investigated as an attempted assassination.

The FBI has not yet identified a motive.

After the shooting, people started running. Mr. Smith, who was wearing a red “Trump 2020” visor, said it was chaos from that point.

“There is no place for this in politics,” he said. “We dislike Joe Biden, we are not out trying to harm him. There is no place for that. That’s not America. That’s not what people should be doing.”

Former President Trump was quickly removed from the stage, surrounded by Secret Service agents, and taken to a local hospital. He was later released and flew to New Jersey where he spent the night at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to The Associated Press.

Rachel Wang contributed to this report.