Newly surfaced video shows Thomas Crooks casually walking around the rally grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 about 90 minutes before he opened fire on former President Donald Trump, offering the clearest visual yet of the would-be assassin that day.
The video, taken at 4:26 p.m. by Joe Tomko, a merchandise vendor, shows Crooks and other rally attendees walking by booths selling Trump memorabilia across the field from the American Glass Research complex. Crooks would eventually fire eight shots at Trump from the roof of one of the buildings in the complex, killing one spectator and injuring two others.
Tomko’s video appears to be the earliest known footage of Crooks on the day of the rally. Few images have emerged showing Crooks on the rally grounds and those that have been made public are grainy and taken from a distance.
The new video shows Crooks clearly, wearing a grey T-shirt and shorts. He is not acting suspiciously and appears to be unarmed, walking in the direction of the AGR complex. Tomko took the video less than an hour before law enforcement first photographed Crooks – roughly 600 yards northwest of the spot where Tomko was standing, based on CNN geolocation and a metadata review.
A local SWAT officer stationed in an AGR building adjacent to the building Crooks would fire from, noticed Crooks at 5:14 p.m. sitting below the window where the officer had set up his rifle. In an interview with CNN, the Beaver County sniper, Greg Nicol, said that something seemed off about Crooks, which prompted him to take a photo.
Just over 15 minutes later, Nicol saw Crooks holding a range finder pointed at the stage where Trump would speak, setting off a frantic 39-minute-long search for Crooks that exposed a dramatic breakdown in communication between law enforcement agencies, resulting in what is widely seen as the worst Secret Service failure in decades.
Tomko, who told CNN he was selling patriotic hats at the event, said he was reviewing his footage of the rally a week later when he first noticed Crooks in one of the videos. “I was in disbelief,” Tomko said. “I knew right away the video needed to be shared with the FBI first.”
Two days after, Tomko shared the video with the FBI and was subsequently interviewed by federal agents, he said.
Tomko also posted the video – which shows the clearest image of Crooks on the day of the rally yet – on social media.
The FBI declined to comment on Tomko’s video.
