The manager of the Pennsylvania township said officers who were on traffic duty ‘broke free’ to respond.
The manager of the Pennsylvania township that hosted a campaign rally where a gunman fired shots at former President Donald Trump on July 13 said that local officers radioed a call on a tactical channel about a “suspicious male” near the warehouse where he ultimately perched.
In a statement released on July 17, Butler Township Manager Tom Knights said that after the former president arrived, “a call went out for a suspicious male near the AGR building,” referring to the warehouse that was used by Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Multiple officers who were on traffic duty for the rally “broke free from their traffic intersections … to aid in the search” for the suspicious person, the statement said. “A search was conducted around the AGR building and the person of interest was not located, and no ladder was discovered.”
During interviews with NBC News and Fox News, Mr. Knights said that a “blanket tactical channel” was used and that individuals on the channel heard the call about a suspicious male.
“Everyone who was on that tactical channel heard it,” he told NBC News.
It isn’t clear from the interviews whether the Secret Service had been using the tactical channel that Mr. Knights mentioned.
The Secret Service and Mr. Knight’s office didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment. The federal agency, meanwhile, hasn’t issued a response either in a public statement or through a spokesperson about Mr. Knight’s statement regarding the call on the channel.
Mr. Knight said in the interviews and in his statement that an officer tried to gain access to the roof where Mr. Crooks was perched when the suspect then pointed a rifle at him, forcing the officer to drop down to ground level.
Butler Township Police then immediately said the individual on the roof had a weapon, and moments later, he started firing at the rally, according to the statement.
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