Rally participant spots shooter minutes before Trump assassination attempt

A witness to the assassination attempt on US presidential candidate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, who identified himself as Greg, told the BBC that he spotted a man with a gun crawling along the roof of a building near the scene minutes before the shooting.

The man noted that he addressed the police officers who were next to him, but they did not react to his words.

“We noticed a guy crawling on the roof of the building next to us, and we started pointing him out to the police. He was about 15 meters away. So we were standing there pointing at this guy climbing onto the roof. We were like, ‘Hey, guys, there’s a guy with a gun on the roof.’ And the police were like, ‘Uh-uh,’ like they didn’t understand what was going on. And we were like, ‘Hey, right here on the roof. You can see him from here. We can see him! He’s crawling.’ And then I’m like, why is Trump still talking, why hasn’t they taken him off the stage? I’m standing there pointing at him for two or three minutes. The Secret Service is looking down on us from the barn, and I’m pointing at this roof,” the rally participant said.

As previously reported by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the person who attempted to assassinate Trump is named Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was 20 years old and was shot dead at the scene. The BBC specifies that Crooks was from Bethel Park, which is 70 kilometers from the place where Trump spoke.

CNN reports that the shooter was registered to vote as a Republican but made a small donation to a Democratic-affiliated group in 2021.

An assassination attempt on Donald Trump occurred during his speech in Pennsylvania. CNN, citing local authorities, writes that one participant was killed and two others were seriously injured as a result of the shooting.

The Associated Press notes that the assassination attempt on Trump was the first since John Hinckley shot newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan in Washington in 1981.

In May of this year, there was also an assassination attempt on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. After the shooting of Trump, he said that the scenario of the attack on the US presidential candidate was "a carbon copy" of the assassination attempt on Fico.

World leaders have condemned the attack on Donald Trump, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni , Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban , Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron and others.

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