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Graphic footage shows law enforcement standing over body of Trump rally shooter
Graphic bodycam footage released Tuesday by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley shows local law enforcement and a Secret Service agent standing over the body of the gunman in the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The footage, which Grassley said in a social media post was obtained via congressional request, was captured by the body camera of a Beaver County Emergency Services Unit officer.
It shows what appears to be multiple local law enforcement officers and a Secret Service agent standing on the roof from where the shots on Trump were fired from more than 400 feet away. The body of the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, can be seen laying on the roof beside them with a trail of blood.
Last week, a local law enforcement officer with direct knowledge of the events had told CBS News that a sniper from a local tactical team deployed to assist the Secret Service at the rally had snapped a picture of the gunman and saw him looking through a rangefinder minutes before he tried to assassinate Trump.
In the bodycam video, an unnamed Secret Service agent appears to confirm this, saying that the deceased gunman matches the description of the suspicious person in photos that were disseminated prior to the shooting.
“A Beaver County sniper seen and sent the pictures out, this is him,” the agent says in the video, referring to the shooter’s body.
“I don’t know if you got the same ones I did?” an officer asks the agent of the photos.
“I think I did, yeah, he’s (the shooter) got his glasses on,” the agent replies.
The officer adds that the sniper “sent the original pictures, and seen him (the shooter) come from the bike, and set the book bag down, and then lost sight of him.”
The agent also asks about whether an abandoned bike that was found in the area belonged to the shooter.
“We don’t know,” an officer replies.
Sources previously told CBS News that an AR-style rifle, remote transmitter and cellphone was found on the shooter’s body, while two explosive devices, a drone, a tactical vest and four magazines of the same ammunition used in the shooting were found inside the shooter’s car.
In the video, the agent discloses that people who were believed to have filmed the gunman with their phones had been detained for questioning.
“There’s people detained who were filming…maybe they were involved, maybe they weren’t,” the agent tells the officers.
Authorities have since confirmed that the gunman acted alone, and cellphone video has revealed that attendees attempted to alert officers to the shooter a full two minutes before he opened fire on Trump.
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“I think we have three victims in the crowd, are you guys hearing that too?” the agent asks in the video, referring to the rally attendee, a 50-year-old retired firefighter who was killed, along with two other attendees who were critically wounded.
During testimony Monday before the House Oversight Committee, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who then resigned her post Tuesday, alleged that, at some point prior to the shooting, law enforcement teams were sent to identify and interview Crooks after he was deemed suspicious. She did not provide any additional details, including when the team was sent to make contact with him.
“At a number of our protected sites, there are suspicious individuals that are identified all the time,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they constitute a threat.”
However, three sources familiar with a July 17 law enforcement briefing to members of Congress said that Secret Service was notified by the Pennsylvania State Police of a suspicious person with a rangefinder on the ground at 5:51 p.m. — about 20 minutes before the gunman opened fire.
A CBS News analysis has determined that the gunman was able to fire eight rounds in under six seconds before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper.
— Scott MacFarlane, Melissa Quinn, Nicole Sganga and Anna Schecter contributed to this report.
A coalition of conservation groups and Native American tribal citizens on Friday called on President Joe Biden to designate nearly 140,000 acres of rugged, scenic Badlands as North Dakota’s first national monument, a proposal several tribal nations say would preserve the area’s indigenous and cultural heritage.
The proposed Maah Daah Hey National Monument would encompass 11 noncontiguous, newly designated units totaling 139,729 acres in the Little Missouri National Grassland. The proposed units would hug the popular recreation trail of the same name and neighbor Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the 26th president who ranched and roamed in the Badlands as a young man in the 1880s.
“When you tell the story of landscape, you have to tell the story of people,” said Michael Barthelemy, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and director of Native American studies at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. “You have to tell the story of the people that first inhabited those places and the symbiotic relationship between the people and the landscape, how the people worked to shape the land and how the land worked to shape the people.”
The U.S. Forest Service would manage the proposed monument. The National Park Service oversees many national monuments, which are similar to national parks and usually designated by the president to protect the landscape’s features.
Supporters have traveled twice to Washington to meet with White House, Interior Department, Forest Service and Department of Agriculture officials. But the effort faces an uphill battle with less than two months remaining in Biden’s term and potential headwinds in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration.
If unsuccessful, the group would turn to the Trump administration “because we believe this is a good idea regardless of who’s president,” Dakota Resource Council Executive Director Scott Skokos said.
Dozens if not hundreds of oil and natural gas wells dot the landscape where the proposed monument would span, according to the supporters’ map. But the proposed units have no oil and gas leases, private inholdings or surface occupancy, and no grazing leases would be removed, said North Dakota Wildlife Federation Executive Director John Bradley.
The proposal is supported by the MHA Nation, the Spirit Lake Tribe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe through council resolutions.
If created, the monument would help tribal citizens stay connected to their identity, said Democratic state Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, an MHA Nation enrolled member.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service. In a written statement, Burgum said: “North Dakota is proof that we can protect our precious parks, cultural heritage and natural resources AND responsibly develop our vast energy resources.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven’s office said Friday was the first they had heard of the proposal, “but any effort that would make it harder for ranchers to operate and that could restrict multiple use, including energy development, is going to raise concerns with Senator Hoeven.”
A city in New Mexico has reached a $20 million settlement with the family of a woman who was shot and killed by a police officer now charged with second-degree murder.
Teresa Gomez, 45, was fatally shot in October 2023 shortly after a Las Cruces police officer on a bicycle approached her while she sat in a parked car with another person, authorities said. Body camera video shows the officer shot Gomez three times as she tried to drive away.
The officer, identified by the city as Felipe Hernandez, was charged in January and fired months later from the Las Cruces Police Department.
“This settlement should be understood as a statement of the City’s profound feeling of loss for the death of Gomez and of the City’s condolences to her family,” the city of Las Cruces said in a news release sent Friday.
Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. His trial is scheduled for June 2. The Associated Press sent an email Saturday seeking comment from Hernandez’s attorney.
A lawyer for the Gomez family said her relatives are grateful to the city “for recognizing the injustice of Teresa’s death,” the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
“They trust that the city will redouble efforts to make sure no other family suffers the tragedy of losing a loved one to abusive police conduct,” Shannon Kennedy said in a statement to the newspaper.
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