CNN
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A dramatic video obtained by CNN shows for the first time the moment a police officer climbed to the roof of a building overlooking Donald Trump’s rally on July 13 and saw the former president’s would-be assassin just before the shooting began.
Additional footage from the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, obtained by CNN through a public records request, shows local officials complaining that they ordered the Secret Service to station officers near the building from which the gunman fired shots days earlier.
A video from the body-worn camera of the Butler police officer shows him being lifted onto the roof by his colleague and quickly coming back down after seeing the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
About 40 seconds later, Crooks turned and fired eight shots at Trump, hitting him in the ear. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper shot Crooks.
The video does not show Crooks being on the roof before the shooting, and there is no audio of the moment the officer climbed up and quickly jumped back down after coming face-to-face with the gunman.
After the encounter, the officer runs around the building to another side and then runs to his police car to get a rifle.
“Damn, that’s close, bro,” the officer who saw Crooks says to another officer. “Dude, he turned to me.”
One officer asks where the shooter is and the other gasps and replies, “He’s standing upright.”
“Who’s got his eye on him?” the officer asks. “He was right where you picked me up, brother. He was on the left side.”
A voice over the radio says: “We have two civilians – they are taking care of her,” and later: “I need an ambulance in the back.”
This video was released by the Butler Township Police Department in response to CNN’s public records request asking for bodycam or dashboard video showing Butler Township officers or employees in connection with the rally and shooting at the Butler Farm Show on July 13. The township initially declined to release the content, but after CNN objected, it did so.
In another video released by Butler police, an officer can be heard telling his colleagues about ten minutes after the shooting that he had ordered the Secret Service to station police at the building from which Crooks fired.
“I told them they had to fucking post those guys here,” the official said. “I told them, the fucking Secret Service, I fucking told them on Tuesday. I told them they had to fucking post those guys here.”
Another officer responded that he “wasn’t worried about it because I thought someone was on the roof. I thought, this is how we – how the hell can you lose a guy on the way back?”
“I talked to the Secret Service people and they said, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’ll post people here,'” the first officer said.
