Local officials rebutted testimony from the head of the U.S. Secret Service.
Snipers were positioned in a building near former President Donald Trump’s rally in a way that they could not see Thomas Crooks, the man who fired at Trump, local officials said on July 31, rebutting testimony from the U.S. Secret Service’s acting director.
“Where our people were was the far-right side of the AGR building. Their views in no way could have seen Crooks without pushing their heads outside the window and looking back,” Detective Patrick Young, who heads the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, told CNN.
“The videos and the exhibits presented to Congress are purely wrong as to what they’d actually seen,” he added.
Ronald Rowe Jr., the Secret Service’s acting director, said during recent testimony before U.S. Senate committees that snipers could have seen Crooks if they looked in a certain direction.
“I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roofline when that’s where they were posted,” Rowe told senators as he showed images from his team’s visit to the site where the rally was held in Pennsylvania on July 13. “Looking left, why was the assailant not seen?”
The snipers were positioned in a second-story room that overlooked sections of the rooftops of a series of buildings, including the American Glass Research building, from which Crooks ultimately fired a rifle, according to authorities. At least one of the snipers later left the post to look for Crooks after he was identified as a suspicious person due to his milling about and, later, using a rangefinder.
Young told CNN that the snipers were told to remain hidden, so they could not stick their heads out of the window of the room. Photographs shown by Rowe during the hearing displayed the window, which was closed during the rally but opened after the shooting, he said.
Screens were on the windows behind which the snipers were stationed, keeping them hidden from observers, according to Nate Bible, the district attorney for Beaver County.
