Butler Township official describes how small-town cops tried to thwart Trump shooter
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As a House committee took steps Wednesday to grill the Secret Service director about her beleaguered agency’s actions surrounding the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, a local official in Butler County described how two small-town police officers tried unsuccessfully to thwart the gunman.
The details from Butler Township’s manager emerged against the backdrop of ongoing friction between Pennsylvania officials and Secret Service leaders in Washington, D.C. Multiple investigations are delving into what went wrong Saturday night at the Butler Farm Show’s fairgrounds.
Authorities said Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing home worker from Bethel Park, managed to climb onto a roof and fire at Trump just minutes into the former president’s speech despite the presence of numerous heavily armed Secret Service agents and local police officers.
Trump was grazed in the ear, a Buffalo Township man was killed and two other attendees were seriously wounded before the Secret Service killed Crooks in front of a crowd of thousands of fervent Trump supporters.
Since the chaos at the rally, elected officials and everyday Americans alike have expressed bafflement and anger about how a wispy college-age gunman not even old enough to drink managed to defeat the security precautions of the nation’s premier protection agency.
Tom Knights, Butler Township’s manager, said in a prepared statement that on the day of the rally, the Butler Township Police Department was responsible for traffic control along Meridian Road.
Tasked with clearing intersections during the Trump motorcade’s arrival and departure, the department’s officers suddenly had a more urgent mission.
As the former president arrived, Knights said, there was a call about a “suspicious male” near the AGR International building in a complex of warehouse-like industrial structures where Crooks would eventually roost roughly 150 yards from where Trump stood.
Video of Crooks before shooting
The following video appears to show Thomas Matthew Crooks lurking in the area near a building just past the secured perimeter of Saturday’s event at the Butler Farm Show grounds.
The figure in the lower right is thought to be Crooks. This would mean that Crooks was likely in the area for more than an hour prior to the shooting.
Police searched the area but found neither the person nor a ladder, according to Knights.
At that point, a Butler Township police officer hoisted a fellow officer onto a warehouse rooftop. Knights did not identify either officer.
The second officer was pulling himself onto the roof of the AGR International warehouse when the shooter turned his rifle toward the officer, Knights said.
“The officer was in a defenseless position and there was no way he could engage the actor while holding onto the roof edge,” Knights said in his statement.
The officer let go and fell to the ground. Butler Township police “immediately communicated the individual’s location” and that he was armed, Knights said.
It is unclear whether either officer was injured.
Within moments, Crooks started firing.
Knights said Butler Township intends to cooperate with any investigators working on the shooting. He declined further comment.
Knights and other officials in Butler County have either declined or ignored multiple interview requests this week by TribLive.
“I am backing away from media requests for comments and opinions,” Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe texted a TribLive reporter this week. “There are too many questions being posed that I do not have first-hand knowledge of — and too many fingers being pointed.”
Slupe defended his deputies, texting that they “performed their duties at their assigned areas and went above and beyond after the shooting started.” He declined further comment.
District Attorney Richard Goldinger did not respond to numerous phone calls, text messages, and in-person visits to his Butler office seeking comment.
The offices of Butler County’s three commissioners — Leslie Osche, Kimberly Geyer and Kevin Boozel — appeared empty during business hours Wednesday morning. None of the three commissioners responded to numerous phone calls seeking comment.
Municipal officials in Butler Township and Connoquenessing Township — the two municipalities where the fairgrounds operate — also declined to comment.
Meanwhile, new information has continued to dribble out to national media outlets, including details provided by officials in Butler County.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday, for instance, that Goldinger said local police told the Secret Service before the Trump rally that they didn’t have the manpower to help secure the AGR building.
And the New York Times reported Goldinger said in an interview with the newspaper that at least one local police officer fired at Crooks.
All those bits and pieces of information will be part of the multiple reviews underway.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman issued a subpoena Wednesday to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, compelling her to appear before the committee Monday during the first congressional hearing into the attempted assassination, The Associated Press reported.
Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs that committee, said a “lack of transparency and failure to cooperate” with the committee called into question Cheatle’s ability to lead the Secret Service and necessitated the subpoena.
President Joe Biden has ordered an independent review of the shooting. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general also opened an investigation into the Secret Service’s handling of the shooting.
As legislators on Capitol Hill started to delve into the emergency management plans established for the rally, officials in Butler County were unpacking the events of last weekend.
Local law enforcement “had no role in the operational safety of the site, the setting of the site, anything like that,” said Steve Bicehouse, Butler County’s director of emergency management.
The majority of those who worked alongside Secret Service on Saturday — Bicehouse estimated between 60% and 65% — were volunteers, he said.
A total of 51 paramedics and other medically trained first responders helped to treat rally attendees with “general medical problems,” Bicehouse said. More than 250 people received treatment, many for heat-related symptoms; at least six were transported to local hospitals.
He said he could not tally the number of local police and firefighters working at the rally.
Trump’s campaign team contacted Bicehouse and his small staff on July 5 about the rally. They met with Secret Service administrators three days later.
Bicehouse, who helped plan Trump’s visit to Butler County during his presidency in 2020, called the eight-day lead time a typical time frame for planning that kind of event.
Emergency responders were planning for a crowd of up to 25,000 people, Bicehouse said. He declined to provide a number of how many attended that day.
“When we plan for events, we take so many factors into play … so we’re not scrambling for resources after the fact,” he told TribLive.
He would not say whether a shooting was one of the contingencies for which his team planned.
“Was it the No. 1 priority of the day? Absolutely not,” Bicehouse said. “But did we have adequate resources there to deal with it? Absolutely.”
By Wednesday morning, the media presence in Butler County had significantly thinned out.
On Tuesday, nearly a dozen vehicles — with license plates displayed from New York to Virginia to California — were parked along the fairground’s perimeter on Evans City Road. An NBC crew filmed footage alongside a team from Univision, the nation’s largest Spanish-language content provider.
Steven C. Braden said business at Upper Crust, the popular sandwich shop he owns and runs in downtown Butler, had doubled last week leading up to the rally. Braden also owns a detective agency and security firm nearby.
Braden, who said he led an antiterrorism unit while serving in the Marines from 1987 to 1991, worried security teams might have not planned sufficiently for problems at the rally in deep-red Butler County. In the 2020 election, voters there backed Trump by a 2-1 ratio over Biden.
“I think things might have been lax with the Secret Service because people in Butler County love him,” said Braden, 55, of Butler, referring to Trump, the Republican nominee in this year’s presidential race.
“It’s devastating to think it happened in our town.”