And they did. It just wasn’t one singular someone, but why would that specifically be desirable?
The cite I posted said it was the SS behind the left shoulder of Trump that got the shooter. I’m not sure if the team behind the right shoulder of Trump was SS or not. They were the ones who may have had their view blocked by the tree.
I’m getting the impression that the shooter had planned this (or some other event) well in advance. The ladder was reported as 5 ft. That would not get to the top of the roof so he had to use it to climb on the connecting structure between buildings. From there he would have to climb on the roof. That explains the officer who pulled himself up by both hands instead of using a ladder.
The shooter was seen an hour earlier pacing back and forth in front of the metal detector and using a range finder. That’s when he was reported as a person of interest (vs a threat) before Trump came out. At that point he would have been able to check the range to the podium, and the snipers. He could also observe the tree blocking one of the sniper teams if he kept to the left side of the rooftop.
At some point he was seen with a backpack which should have elevated it to a higher level of concern to the SS and even higher when they lost track of him. If this happened before Trump came out then that would have been a good time to delay the event until the person of interest was found and his backpack searched. A rangefinder is a pretty good reason to search it.
I suspect the ladder was hidden behind the parking lot evergreens the night before. He couldn’t have hidden the gun the night before because he borrowed it from his father that day. We will have to wait for a more detailed outline of events.
There were two SS sniper teams. Both up on roof tops. One, the ones to Trumps right shoulder, and the ones in the pictures/videos we see, are SS because you can read it on their vests (a couple high res images are available where you can read it; it’s small). The other, the one you just posted about in the article who made the kill shot on Trump’s left shoulder, are SS because the article says they are.
Here’s the picture in your article (the SS team closest to the bottom is the "left shoulder team/made the kill shot; the SS team with the view blocked was the ones we see in the pictures/video):
I do know there were 4 sniper teams total. 2 secret service (up on roof tops). 2 local law enforcement ones. Down on the ground, scanning the crowd (one inside the building where it says “gunman”).
Edit: Changed my post since you clarified. But I’ll leave picture up since I think it’s helpful and new info.
I just fixed my statement. I’m not sure if the Sniper team behind Trump’s RIGHT shoulder were SS. I did see a picture of one of them with the word “Police” on their back so the media could be getting things wrong either way. Here’s a cite with a picture of counter sniper with “Police” on their vest. You have to scroll down to see it.
You’re correct.
I read the article, basically and I believe correctly, as one SS sniper team was covering the left side, the other team covering the right side. The team covering the side with the building the gunman ended up on had an obstructed view of it. The other team then had to turn around from covering their side to kill the gunman (“That team was initially directed to go another way, so the snipers had to reorient themselves before taking down the gunman, CBS News’ Charlie de Mar reported”). Something just felt off about that. I did read a timing component into that that might not be there - maybe they were reoriented with plenty of time.
It still leads back to the same problems as to why they waited/had to wait, etc for the gunman to shoot first before shooting him. I’d guess a lack of information as to how much a threat he was…unless they were not reoriented with enough time. If they were looking/had a line of sight at the gunman, I don’t see the gunman getting off a lot of shots before the SS team killed him.
I can understand the SS snipers being reluctant to shoot as long as Crooks was merely on the roof but not showing that he had a gun yet (“maybe he’s just a prankster or wants a view of the event,”) but the moment they saw that Crooks was on the roof and had a rifle, they ought to have dropped him right then and there. That would be as justified a shooting as could be.
Agreed. You have to know it was a rifle.
One SS sniper team can’t see him because view is obstructed. The other SS team, possibly per that CBS article, was not looking at that rooftop until after he shot. If they did reorient themselves prior to the shooting, they just couldn’t see him (angle of the roof) or didn’t know he had a rifle until it was too late, or something.
Again, this is new info, but I’m still just speculating. We’ll know some more concrete stuff later/at the hearing.
The response was too quick for someone to reorient a tri-pod or just swing a around freehand. Those sniper rifles were HUGE. I suspect they were alerted to the building and gunman and were in the process of spotting him when the first shot was fired. The return fire was quick and on target. The whole thing could have come down to a few seconds.
This NYT article is helpful. Videos Show Secret Service Snipers Were Focused Toward Gunman at Trump Rally
Both SS sniper teams were facing the gunman’s direction with plenty of time (over a minute).
If I’m reading/watching it right, and using that CBS article to differentiate between the two teams (right shoulder = closest to gunman/obstructed view; left shoulder = initially facing opposite direction of gunman to cover a different area), then it happens like this:
6min prior: The “right shoulder” SS sniper team with the obstructed view team was very casual. One looking at Trump, one possibly scanning in the gunman’s general direction about 6mins before the shooting. I can’t imagine anything serious is on their radar at this time.
1:58min prior: The same “right shoulder” team is no longer casual. The are looking in the direction where the gunman is a bit more seriously, one is scanning with binoculars (probably a spotter). One attendee says, “Uh-oh, something’s going on.”
[It was around this time that people started pointing the gunman out to law enforcement on the ground.]
1:35min prior: The “left shoulder” sniper team reoriented itself (turned 180 degrees around to face the direction of the gunman) about 1min 35sec before the gunman shot.
Seconds before and when Shots Fired: The “right shoulder team” both have their eyes on their rifle scopes - no binoculars. Shots are fired and (me speculating) it appears they move to see where those shots came from as they back off their scopes (so they can “see” wider) and move backwards a bit.
It’s not clear what the “left shoulder” team was doing just before/when shots fired except they did make the kill shot seconds later.
Is it possible that Crooks was deliberately positioning himself so that the tree would be between him and the first SS sniper team? (Not like it would really make a difference, since there was the 2nd team that would be unobstructed.)
Possibly that was why, but no idea. There’s a rough way for the gunman to check - if he can’t see the snipers when he’s on the roof, the snipers can’t see him.
Here’s another NYT Time video (6mins long) that walks through all the footage - probably paywalled, but not sure how to provide a free link - maybe this. It’s a pretty coherent timeline and puts all the different clips together, and some new ones I had not seen (the gunman walking around checking out the building; officers walking up to the building once the crowd alerts them to the gunman, etc.).
Just to be clear, the “right” shoulder sniper team appear to have an obstructed view. The “left” shoulder sniper team are believed to have made the kill shot. SS has not confirmed any of this.
I can’t imagine that SS director not being fired.
Wow, thanks for the video links CoolHandCox. That’s a lot of information. They will have a field day with that on the evening news. Imagine all the other videos that are going to surface.
Either the counter snipers saw all the people pointing or the local police alerted the SS.
Maybe I’m assessing the angles wrong, but from looking at a diagram, it looks like, if Crooks had wanted to, he could have actually been on the roof at an angle in which neither SS sniper team could have hit him (because they would have both been obstructed by trees.)
Not that that would really change things, though, since he’d be killed or arrested either way, and the SS agents near Trump piled on Trump instantly to serve as a human shield against any further bullets.
The satellite image suggests you’re right. However, based on the shadows of tall towers in those images the satellite was not overhead when the image was taken and may be skewed when stitched together with other images. I would say it’s close enough.
Also, the sniper team closest to the shooter could cover the shooter’s location if they moved to the other end of the building they’re on. that would be a serious delay if the other team couldn’t see him.
An acoustics question, as someone who’s rarely fired a gun: Why do the gunshots in the shooting video sound less like gunfire and more like…a wet object slapping a table (or whatever one would use to describe it?) Is that what an AR-15 typically sounds like?
Movie gun sounds != real gun sounds.
A million years ago, when I used to do target shooting, I thought of the sound as similar to slapping together a couple decent sized slats of wood.
An AR-15 doesn’t sound much different than any other rifle. Gunfire doesn’t sound like it does in the movies. The sound was picked up by directional mics pointed at Trump, the area was very open and the mics weren’t close to the weapon. If you are 150-200 meters from a firing rifle outside it’s not going to be overly loud. In person it would sound a bit different than it does on the video.
Plus, microphones and the sound systems they’re attached to are designed to faithfully capture sounds like human speech or music. They’re not designed to faithfully capture gunshots. So what you’d hear live is different from what you’d hear in a movie, and what you’d hear in videos of actual events is different from what you’d hear live.
adding to that…
all those basic audio recording devices (mostly cellphones) have limiters/compressors … so (somewhat oversimplified), everything very loud like a gunshot will be recorded at a lower level, as in the digital domain you cannot saturate/overdrive the medium like you could do in the analogue domain.
So, in a certain way, cellphones and those semi-pro hi-res cameras make everything sound equally loud or silent. Same is true and easily verifiable for 1000s of vids from the UKR war.
Here a conceptual schematic of a compressor:
There was talk of the secret service having drones over the event. They didn’t, but Crooks did, and just a few hours before Trump took the stage.
The TMZ references this article, but it’s paywalled and I haven’t seen it. However, it should be the cite for “hours before” claim.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-gunman-flew-drone-over-rally-site-hours-before-attempted-assassination-2d0e2e1a