Janice R. Andrews
Butler, Pennsylvania — According to a security expert, the guy who shot former President Donald Trump on Saturday was in the “perfect location” to carry out the attack, underscoring what he called a “massive” breakdown by the Secret Service.
At a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired several shots towards the head of the former president from a building around 165 yards away. Trump suffered a bullet wound to his ear and two additional serious injuries. Tragically, former firefighter Corey Comperatore perished while valiantly protecting his family from the oncoming fire.
The owner of a private security firm and former lieutenant colonel Darin Gaub said he was shocked that Crooks’s location was not secured by the Secret Service. “That other building that this sniper was on was a perfect location to have oversight of the entire crowd and be able to see what was going on from that angle,” Gaub stated to DailyMail.com. “I would have absolutely selected that site to put somebody on there.”
Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle referred to the agency’s actions during the rally as “unacceptable.” She mentioned that the roof from which Crooks fired was dangerous for stationing agents because of its minor slope in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday. “The roof of that specific building slopes upward at its highest point. Therefore, we wouldn’t want to place someone on a sloped roof for safety reasons, she said.
Gaub wrote off Cheatle’s justification as a fallback. “It seems like trash to me. It’s merely a pretext. It doesn’t make sense,” he remarked. “The Secret Service already had snipers on a slope roof of the same design 150 yards away, making the whole thing a mockery.”
At first, Cheatle insisted that the building Crooks occupied had to be secured by the local government. She eventually withdrew her claim, admitting that the Secret Service was “solely responsible” for the attack’s failure to stop it.
Gaub stressed the value of “force protection,” a concept he picked up in the military and which entails taking complex precautions to fend off invading forces. “Like this sniper used in Pennsylvania, those principles are all the same, and you can clearly look at this rally site and see what the most critical locations that someone needs to be on,” he stated. “And that building that that sniper was on was one of the most critical locations there.”
Working in security requires one to anticipate their assault plans and think like an adversary. There aren’t many buildings that have the same direct view of the president as the one that Crooks chose for the Saturday event. According to Gaub, the Secret Service failed strategically in not recognising the roof from which Crooks fired as a significant threat. “This is one of the most unforgiving jobs in the world, and when you make a mistake, a life is lost,” he stated. “And a mistake was made.”
While the inquiry is ongoing, the incident has brought up important concerns regarding the security measures in place to safeguard well-known individuals and the responsibility of those entrusted with their protection.
