Obstructed view may have delayed sniper response at Trump rally
3D analysis shows countersnipers likely had difficulty seeing the gunman before he fired.
Within seconds of 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident Thomas Matthew Crooks opening fire at former president Donald Trump’s rally in Butler on Saturday evening, he was fatally shot by the Secret Service. But how did a specialized team of countersnipers fail to prevent its worst security lapse in decades?
A Washington Post analysis, based on more than 40 videos and photos, as well as satellite imagery and terrain analysis used to build a 3D model examining the rally site and shooter’s position, found that the two Secret Service countersniper teams may have initially been hindered in their ability to see the shooter as he crawled up the roof due to its slanted sides. Trees near the rally probably played a part in obscuring the shooter from at least one team assigned to detect and neutralize would-be snipers.
The Secret Service is responsible for the overall coordination of security measures during an event. The agency’s director said it tasked local law enforcement with securing the building from which Crooks opened fire and that officers failed to prevent him from accessing the roof.
The Secret Service declined to comment when asked whether the slant of the roof or the trees would have impacted the teams’ ability to respond.
The Post’s assessments were reviewed and corroborated by three former law enforcement officials, including two retired snipers and a former Secret Service agent, as well as a former Marine sniper.
The Post’s 3D model established that both units may have been hampered by the pitch of the building’s roof where Crooks was found, which rises roughly 3.5 feet from its exterior walls to its peak. According to the analysis, which placed a camera at the eye view of the teams, Crooks would probably not have been visible as he crawled up the roof to take his final shooting position. The Post’s reconstruction shows that the northernmost Secret Service countersniper team closest to the shooter — slightly more than 400 feet away and atop an approximately 23-foot-tall barn — may have further struggled to see him because of two trees located between them.
The second countersniper team, located roughly 550 feet from the shooter, while farther away, could have had a less obstructed view, according to The Post’s reconstruction, because they were positioned slightly to the west and the trees may not have been in their line of sight.
Countersniper teams commonly scan for threats with binoculars, which offer a wider field of vision than a rifle optic, said Jason Lawless, a retired officer who worked as a sniper with the Tulsa Police Department’s Special Operations Team. But about two minutes before gunshots were fired, the northernmost team had already moved to their rifle positions, suggesting they were attuned to a potential threat at that point. It’s unclear exactly when Crooks first became visible to Secret Service countersnipers.
“If they’re on scope, they’ve been notified about something,” Lawless said. As Crooks fired his first shots, one of the countersnipers on the northernmost team flinched, he said, took his eye away from the scope, and reset his position.
The southernmost countersniper team, which can be seen in earlier images facing south, appeared to reorient northward before Crooks allegedly fired, suggesting that they were also aware of a threat.
The two teams’ positions on the barn roofs sat between approximately five and eight feet higher than the rooftop from which Crooks allegedly fired from. This meant that both teams were probably not high enough to see Crooks as he crawled up the other side of the roof, The Post’s model showed.
A law enforcement official with knowledge of the shooting said the sloped roof could have created a visual block to the countersnipers. The countersniper who killed Crooks had him in his sights for some moments trying to assess whether he had a gun and was a threat and then shot him seconds after Crooks fired, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity amid an ongoing investigation.
Authorities have not said which member of Trump’s protection team shot and killed the gunman.
How Crooks scaled the roof of a nearby building, over 400 feet away from where Trump was speaking without being stopped by law enforcement, is under active investigation.
Aerial footage verified by The Post showed his body was located about 40 feet from the eastern edge of the building, which looks out on a parking lot. A few feet from him was a rifle, and farther down the roof an object that resembled a bag.
The Post’s 3D reconstruction shows that while there are trees in between the shooter and one of the Secret Service teams — which would have offered him concealment, according to Lawless and the other experts — the view between the shooter and the podium where Trump was standing was largely unimpeded.
Aerial footage showed a ladder leaning against a structure connected to the building Crooks allegedly fired from, where there are also air conditioning units. It’s unclear how the shooter reached the roof of the building, which at its lowest point is just over 13 feet high.
While the countersniper teams would have had difficulty seeing Crooks while he was on the far side of the roof, onlookers outside of the rally were able to easily spot him before the first gunfire, raising questions about the effectiveness of nearby local law enforcement patrols.
Multiple videos filmed by attendees outside the rally’s perimeter and verified by The Post reveal their attempts to alert law enforcement to a person on the roof who they thought might be armed. Police officers in the videos walk near the building from which Crooks fired. One video verified by The Post shows people calling out to officers that there was a man on the roof at least 86 seconds before the first shots were fired at 6:11 p.m. The camera zooms in to show him lying on his stomach.
“There should have been police officers in the vicinity who could have either denied him access to start with, or instantly respond to the call,” said Derrick Bartlett, a retired Fort Lauderdale Police Department SWAT sniper and president of the American Sniper Association. “So there was a hole in the security.”
At 6:11 p.m., gunfire crackled the air.
Two audio experts — Rob Maher of Montana State University and Steven Beck of Beck Audio Forensics — counted a total of 10 gunshots after analyzing verified footage of the assassination attempt and law enforcement response that followed. The first eight had similar audio characteristics and were fired in six seconds. They were followed immediately by a shot from a different location, they said, and, 16 seconds after the shooting began, by a final shot. These last two gunshots had different acoustic signatures from the previous ones, suggesting a security response. Both Maher and Beck cautioned that audio analysis alone could not determine the exact source of these gunshots.
On Tuesday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said that local police were responsible for securing the building’s perimeter and that officers were inside when Crooks was on the roof. Part of the reason the agency didn’t request an officer on top, she said, was over safety concerns for someone standing on an angled roof.
The Post’s analysis shows the countersniper teams were positioned on steeper roofs.
On July 14, the day after the shooting, President Biden ordered an independent review of the incident. In a statement, Cheatle said her agency is “working with all involved federal, state and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again.”
Carol Leonnig, Joyce Sohyun Lee and Kevin Uhrmacher contributed to this report.
Methodology
To build a 3D model of the rally site in Butler, Pa., The Post examined videos, photographs, satellite imagery, and lidar data of the location. Thomas Bordeaux, a graduate student at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, provided The Post with the lidar data, which The Post verified as being from the United States Geological Survey. The dimensions of permanent buildings on the site, including the structures on which the shooter and the USSS were positioned, were calculated using satellite measurements and lidar data. This data was processed in QGIS to calculate the height of building walls and the pitch of their roofs. The resulting figures were cross referenced with photographs of the buildings to arrive at their final representation. Temporary structures at the scene like the bleachers and stage were modeled by analyzing their features from multiple perspectives in videos and photographs to understand their scale in relationship to measurable objects in the scene.
The two trees south of the shooter were measured using lidar data referenced with analysis of images and videos; using these dimensions, The Post scaled a commercially built 3D model of the trees within the scene. The trees were selected to best represent the general density of the leaves and branches, but they are not a precise reconstruction of the foliage.
About this story
Editing by Nadine Ajaka and Sarah Frostenson. 3D analysis by Jarret Ley. 3D modeling by Aaron Steckelberg. Graphics by Samuel Granados and William Neff. Graphics editing by Manuel Canales. Videos by Jonathan Baran and Imogen Piper. Development by Garland Potts. Copy editing by Jeremy Hester.