Two law enforcement officers left their station inside a building that overlooked a rooftop near a Donald Trump rally just minutes before a gunman climbed onto it and attempted to assassinate the former president, the head of the Pennsylvania State Police said on Tuesday.
The pair of SWAT-trained officers, both members of the local Butler Emergency Services Unit, were the first to identify Thomas Matthew Crooks as suspicious, Colonel Christopher Paris testified before the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the Associated Press.
Crooks, 20, stood out because he “was milling about and he stood out to them because he never made his way to a point of ingress to the venue,” Paris said, according to NBC News.
