Washington Post: Local police officer saw gunman before shooting but couldn’t engage, sheriff says
A local police officer saw the gunman just before he fired on a Donald Trump rally Saturday but was unable to engage him, Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe said in an interview Sunday with The Washington Post.
Slupe told The Post that the officer was examining the area after there were requests from law enforcement to identify a suspicious person.
“So police responded to try to find the guy, searched the area, but couldn’t find him, so said, ‘Well, let’s try the roof,’” Slupe said.
Slupe said the officer pulled himself up enough to look on the roof and see the gunman, who also saw the officer and pointed his gun at the officer.
“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said. The gunman then started firing.
CNN reported earlier that the shooter was spotted outside the event by local law enforcement, who thought he might’ve been acting suspiciously near the walk-through metal detectors, according to a senior law enforcement official. They put out a call over the radio to keep an eye on him, and that information was passed on to Secret Service, the source said.
Moments after Donald Trump was rushed to safety following a failed assassination attempt at a Saturday rally, some of his supporters turned toward the press pen with obscenities as they fingered reporters for blame.
“It is your fault!” exclaimed another.
Axios reporter Sophia Cai, who quoted some in the crowd warning the press, “you’re next” and that their “time is coming,” even reported that a few rallygoers tried to breach the barriers establishing the press pen, but that they were stopped by security personnel.
In the immediate wake of the horrific shooting, the news media has quickly emerged among some Trump supporters as a body to assign blame.
While the Trump campaign urged its staff to “condemn all forms of violence” and said it “will not tolerate dangerous rhetoric on social media,” some of the former president’s supporters in MAGA media vehemently assailed the press for its hard-knuckled reporting on Trump, which has sounded the alarm on what four more years under the former president would look like.
Over the course of the campaign cycle, news organizations have, among other things, reported at length on Trump’s plans to warp the federal government for his own ends, including to seek vengeance against his political opponents. That reporting is now facing scrutiny, with some Trump supporters blaming it for producing a charged atmosphere that gave way to the assassination attempt, while mostly looking past the incendiary rhetoric of the former president himself.
