OAN Staff James Meyers
2:34 PM – Thursday, August 8, 2024
Newly released bodycam footage revealed the moment that a police officer was boosted onto the same roof where the would-be Trump shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was perched with his weapon.
The officer found himself staring down the gunman’s barrel.
Fox News Digital was able to obtain the footage, which came from a Butler Township police officer who climbed onto the roof of AGR International on July 13th.
The officer is seen being lifted up by another officer, then struggling to pull himself up, as he peers over the roof ledge.
Approximately 40 seconds later, Crooks quickly turns his back and fires eight shots at Trump, who was only hit in the ear after moving his head at the perfect time of the shot. Seconds later, a Secret Service counter sniper shoots and kills Crooks.
However, the bodycam audio does not turn on until halfway through.
“He’s got glasses, long hair,” the officer says, describing Crooks’s backpack and the AR-15 rifle he was carrying.
After the tense encounter, the officer runs around to another side of the building before running to his police vehicle to retrieve a rifle. The officer then grabs his radio to request an immediate ambulance to the rally’s VIP tent.
After minutes go by, the officers surrounding the building receive different orders and they begin helping each other up onto the roof.
The officer who first looked over the top then requests to go back on the roof, and it shows 20-year-old Crooks lying dead with a trail of his blood pouring down the rooftop’s slope.
The ledge that the first officer climbed was close to 12-feet off the ground. After going into shock and climbing back down, he began to fall at around 8-feet and sprained his ankle. His shock was prompted by Crooks pointing his gun at him.
As a result, the officer was not able to draw his gun on Crooks since both of his hands were pinned as he tried to pull himself up on the roof, according to Butler Township Police Lt. Matthew Pearson, which is also shown in his bodycam footage.
Towards the end of the footage, it is made apparent that the officer is visibly angry and frustrated that authorities were not communicating on the same radio channels as him and his back up.
“Before you motherf*****s came up here, I popped my head up there like an idiot by myself dude,” he says, “Then he turned around and I f***** dropped and I started f***** I was calling out bro, f***** on top of the roof.”
“F***** we’re not on the same frequency?”
In another video released by Butler Police, one officer is heard yelling at his fellow officers, telling them that he had told Secret Service to post authorities by the building that Crooks was firing from.
“I f**king told them they need to post the guys f**king over here,” the officer said. “I told them that, the f**king, the Secret Service, I told them that f**king Tuesday. I told them to post f**king guys over here.”
Another officer replied that he wasn’t “even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof. I thought that’s how we — how in the hell can you lose a guy walking back here?”
“I talked to the Secret Service guys, they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re going to post guys over here,’” the first officer said.
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