The attack on Donald Trump on Saturday afternoon took place at one of the mass rallies that the former president usually holds for his supporters in small towns across the country. The meeting was in Butler, in northwestern Pennsylvania, an hour from Pittsburgh. The Trump campaign chose a farmhouse for the rally.
The suspect who slightly wounded Trump killed one rally-goer and left two others in critical condition. The shooter was a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks, with no criminal record, who lived in Bethel Park, about 50 kilometers from the scene of the shooting. He was a registered Republican voter. His motives are currently unknown. Secret Service agents killed him immediately.
Crooks fired from a position on the roof of an industrial building outside the security compound, about 150 metres from where the former president was speaking to thousands of his supporters, who were in a state of panic.
A study of the videos of the incident allows us to conclude that Crooks had time to fire eight times, eight sharp sounds that alerted those attending the rally and Trump himself, who had begun speaking about 10 minutes earlier.
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In the following video, Trump can be seen suddenly putting his hand to his ear, which starts to bleed, and quickly lying down on the ground. The officers in charge of his protection rush to cover the former president with their bodies, as advised by security protocol. Everything happens very quickly, and it seems that the people sitting behind him remain surprisingly calm. There is no stampede, perhaps because by then they already knew that the attacker was dead.
It cannot be said for certain that it was a bullet that caused the minor wound to Trump’s ear. If so, the former president was very close to being shot in the head.
It is possible to say that at least one of the projectiles passed just a few centimeters behind where Trump was standing. Or at least that is what an image taken by the photographer of The New York Times which captures the moment when one of the bullets flies after the Republican candidate’s head.
Crooks used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, which, according to initial investigations, was purchased by his father a few months ago. He also had explosive material in the trunk of his car. The AR-15 is a weapon patented in the 1950s for military purposes. It is the most commonly used weapon in mass shootings that constantly occur throughout the United States.
The assassination attempt left behind a trail of questions about the actions of the officers in charge of security at the event. Such rallies are usually heavily armoured, with metal detectors and snipers stationed on rooftops in the area, controlling a vast perimeter. How could they have missed the fact that a man armed with a rifle had managed to climb onto the roof of one of the few buildings in a predominantly rural area? Witnesses told the media that they tried for minutes to alert the officers to the suspect’s presence, but that the officers were too slow to react.
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