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A Pennsylvania State Police colonel, testifying before a House panel, gave more answers about rally security than the director of the Secret Service and raised more questions.
By Campbell Robertson and David A. Fahrenthold
Reporting from Bethesda, Maryland and Washington
Two days before a gunman wounded former President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service toured the site of the planned election rally with members of the Pennsylvania State Police, who had been arrested on additional security grounds.
At one point, a state police official raised a question about the roof of a warehouse located less than 500 feet from the level from which Trump was scheduled to speak.
The Secret Service’s reaction — according to the state police commander’s testimony at a congressional hearing Tuesday — was that a local police unit would guard that building.
“We were told that Butler E. S. U. was in this area, through several Secret Service agents on this visit,” said Col. Christopher Paris of the State Police, referring to the Emergency Services Unit, a SWAT-style tactical unit made up of officials. from several local counties.
It is one of the new and desirable main points about the July 13 shooting that emerged from Colonel Paris’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. He described a security scenario that disastrously compromised, through breakdowns in communication and accountability, the complex way a suspicious guy’s photo is taken transmitted between law enforcement agencies and the last-minute resolution of local snipers. to leave an elevated vantage point to search for the suspect on foot.
The suspicious guy turned out to be a gunman who was going to kill the Republican presidential candidate. The would-be assassin, later known as Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, used the roof of the warehouse to fire a series of shots, wounding Trump, killing one rally attendee and wounding two others.
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