Witnesses warned Trump's security about shooter minutes before shots were fired: Reports

Following an assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, the US Secret Service is finding itself in the eye of the storm amid claims that they were warned about a man on the roof with a gun by people at the rally. Several eyewitnesses claim to have warned officials about the assassin several minutes before the shots were fired.

BBC quoted an eyewitness as saying that he and his friends informed law enforcement officials about the man after they saw a bear crawling onto a rooftop with a rifle. “We noticed the guy crawling, bear-crawling, up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away from us,” he told the BBC.

However, the witness claims that despite “pointing at” the shooter, officers seemed to be oblivious to what was going on and were “running around on the ground".

“I’m standing there pointing at [the gunman] for, you know, two or three minutes. The Secret Service is looking at us,” he said.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?’" the witness added.

Notably, perched on top of a manufacturing plant, the gunman got within 500 feet of Trump as he addressed a rally. The shooter was shot dead and has been identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20.

He was armed with an AR-15 assault rifle. Multiple shots were fired into the rally, grazing Trump’s ear, killing one spectator and injuring two others, before Crooks was shot dead by a trained sniper.

It raised immediate questions about security failures by the Secret Service, the highly trained agency which provides current senior government officials and former US presidents with lifetime protection.

Lapses in Trump's security

According to another report by NBC, the Secret Service had identified the rooftop as a potentially vulnerable point in the days before the campaign rally. Two sources told NBC News that the Secret Service was aware of the risks associated with the building owned by a glass research company.

“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” one of the sources, a former senior Secret Service agent, said.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has said that the agency worked with local law enforcement to maintain safety at the event, including posting sniper teams on rooftops. However, the pertinent question around the investigations is why no one was posted on this particular building and how the shooter managed to get on it.

Probe into the assassination attempt

The FBI has taken the lead on the investigation and will likely identify how the lapse happened. Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats have called on the US Congress to conduct its own investigation.

Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director, finds herself in a pickle over the major incident in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Jim Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has demanded she appear before the Congress for a hearing.

Kevin Rojek, the FBI’s special agent in charge, said that he was surprised to see that Crooks was able to fire a shot before being killed.