FBI Deputy Director discusses how Crooks got AR-15 onto the roof
Details are beginning to emerge about how the 20-year-old would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to get close enough to Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday to shoot the former United States president in the ear. Evading Secret Service agents and local law enforcement officers, Crooks reached a rooftop about 140 metres (450ft) from where Trump was speaking on a stage and fired, grazing the Republican candidate running in the presidential election in November. Crooks was shot dead by the Secret Service immediately after firing, and an investigation into the incident is ongoing. In the days since the shooting, digital “bread crumbs” have been gathered via media outlets, photographers at the rally and personal cellphone videos depicting the events leading up to the shooting.