New video posted over the weekend by a man who was near the AGR building when shots were fired at President Trump at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania shows police reacting to a perceived threat on the roof of the building several minutes before the would-be assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire. Two minutes before Crooks’ first shot, an officer could be seen with his handgun drawn as he kept watch on the roof from the opposite side of where Crooks turned out to be. (Note: the 6:10 pm on the screen is a watermark, not a timestamp.)
The man who posted the videos, self-identified as Dave, Dayve Stewart or realDJStew724, posted them to X Twitter and YouTube after getting his phone back from the FBI, he said.
A short video posted Saturday to X has the moment when Crooks opened fire, through the sniper kill shot and the police reaction afterward.
Stewart has situational awareness, warning someone near him as he sees police again responding to a perceived threat, “Make yourself small, bro. I don’t know what’s going on,” about twelve seconds before Crooks opened fire.
Butler, Pa Trump Rally Shooting. 07/13/24. This is a 2 minute clip from about an hours worth of footage that I recorded from the fence line. More to come. The F.B.I. seized my phone that day and I took it back from them on 07/19/24 pic.twitter.com/NlIPCladVC
— Dave (@realDJStew724) July 27, 2024
Video taken from the stands looking toward the AGR building shows Stewart, in a red shirt, racing to get behind a tree right before the shooting started.
That’s me in the red shirt running behind the tree. You can see a small clip of the footage from my perspective in my previous posts. I will continue to most more clips so stay tuned pic.twitter.com/aQXteXwHpL
— Dave (@realDJStew724) July 28, 2024
A longer video Stewart posted to YouTube has a few minutes from an hour before the shooting where someone (unsuccessfully) tried to clear the area. The video breaks and resumes a few minutes before the shooting started.
At least five police officers can be seen warily eying the roof while taking up positions around the AGR building, with one officer wielding his handgun from a distance of the building two minutes before the shooting started, and then climbing on top of a picnic table to get a better view of the roof.
One minute before Crooks opened fire, two officers are seen approaching the building, first walking, then running out of sight around the end of the building while a woman on a horse with a Trump flag calmly rides by. At this point Trump can be heard talking about the immigration chart that would soon save his life.
Thirty seconds before the shooting started, a man and a woman are seen walking toward the corner of the AGR building where the two officers went when the man suddenly sprints away, leaving the woman who was slower to react but then she starts running as one of the police officers comes running back into sight with a hand on his uniform mic. The officer then appears to draw his sidearm. After Stewart tells the nearby person to “make yourself small,” the officer yells at them to move back (seven seconds before the shooting.) Four seconds before the shooting a voice is heard crying out, “He’s got a gun!”
The officer runs parallel to the building toward the middle of it just before Crooks fires off three quick shots. (Some viewers think they can see Crooks at 4:53 in the video, just before he fired, at the top of the roof above where the drain pipe and window on the exterior wall are located.) A second burst is heard along with one counter-sniper round that missed, and then after a long pause the crack of the Secret Service sniper’s kill shot of Crooks is heard.
The video ends with a man in a suit approaching Stewart. The man, who appears to be the same man in a suit later seen in police bodycam video talking with officers on the roof guarding Crooks’ body, just wanted to photograph Stewart’s ID. A state trooper would soon take Stewart into custody and take his phone, apparently giving it to the FBI who would keep it for almost a week.
This video synched Stewart’s video with video of Trump speaking at the rally at the time of the shooting to provide context.
Stewart’s video reveals the state and local police trying to handle a situation the Secret Service should have been handling, but the superiors at the Secret Service decided otherwise. (BTW, no one is apparently seen on the water tower, neither friend nor foe.)
The officers radioed in what they were seeing, but when an officer felt compelled to draw his weapon from a perceived threat on the roof while Trump was on stage, Trump and his Secret Service detail were not warned. Two minutes later Trump was shot in the head, one supporter was killed and two supporters were seriously wounded.
