The first shot back at the would-be assassin who was firing at Donald Trump last month was from local law enforcement and hit the gunman’s weapon, briefly knocking him down, a preliminary report from US Congress has revealed.
The gunman was wounded by fragments flying from the damaged weapon and then, as he got back up, he was killed by a federal sniper, the report found.
The Louisiana Republican congressman Clay Higgins, a member of a House of Representatives taskforce set up to investigate the assassination attempt at the former president’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, issued the interim report.
It found that the gunman, Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots from the rooftop of a warehouse, slightly injuring Trump on stage and hitting several in the crowd gathered on 13 July, killing one, a father who dived to protect relatives.
“The 9th shot fired on J13 was from a Butler SWAT operator from the ground about 100 yards away from the AGR building [where the gunman was positioned]. Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up,” Higgins’s report said.
The special weapons and tactics (Swat) officer’s bullet delayed the gunman, and Higgins said he was almost certain it damaged the aggressor’s assault rifle, rendering it incapable of firing further shots.
“The Swat operator who took this shot was a total badass; when he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured by foliage moving target on the AGR rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds,” Higgins’s report said, adding that, on his own, the officer took “a very hard shot, one shot”.
However, the officer said that Crooks recovered after just a few seconds, and “popped back up”.
At that point a Secret Service sniper fired the “10th (and, I believe, final) shot”, hitting the gunman in the head and killing him, Higgins’s report said.
He criticized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for cleaning up “biological evidence” from the crime scene and, he believes, authorizing the release of the gunman’s body for cremation on 23 July. The FBI defended its “painstaking investigation”.
Higgins has submitted his interim report to Mike Kelly, the Pennsylvania Republican congressman and chair of the taskforce.
Trump is speaking at an indoor rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday afternoon. He has not held another outdoor rally since the shooting, but is expected to do so soon and reports on Friday said the security services would install bulletproof glass around such stages in future, a step typically reserved for sitting presidents.
