- Former US President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
- The shooter was on high ground about 450 feet away from his target.
- The Secret Service has been criticized for failing to prevent the incident.
Satellite imagery shows that the gunman who shot Donald Trump was just 450 feet away from the former US president.
President Trump was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday when shots rang out and he was surrounded by Secret Service agents.
The former president emerged from the scene with blood coming from his ears as investigators led him away.
The FBI later identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the shooter.
In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Crooks “fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position.”
The Associated Press located a video posted on social media that showed a man dressed in gray camouflage clothing lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of where the rally was taking place.
The attacker could easily have shot Trump from that distance.
US Army recruits are trained to shoot man-sized targets 150 meters away with M-16 rifles, according to the Associated Press, which said the AR-15 used by the shooter is a civilian version of the military-grade M-16.
Satellite imagery showed members of Trump’s Secret Service standing about 440 feet away from Crook.
Asked whether police were unaware of a shooter until shots were fired, FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek said, “That’s our assessment at this point.”
Matt Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence officer, called the incident a “major failure” by the Secret Service.
“I’ve been to these types of events before and there are layers of security,” Shoemaker said, “so it’s incredible that the alleged shooter was on the roof, in easy reach of the podium, and went unnoticed.”
Tim McCarthy, who protected then-President Ronald Reagan from a gunman in 1981, also acknowledged that the incident was a police failure.
“Any time a protected person is harmed, something has to change,” McCarthy said. Chicago-based WGN-TV“We need to critically examine what happened, why it happened and how we can prevent it in the future.”
