On X, journalist Curtis Houck of News Busters wrote, “Earlier in the day, he passed through Secret Service security with his rangefinder and scoped out the snipers, who noticed him and stated they needed to keep a watch on him.”
“He promised coworkers he would see them on Sunday, but he went into work at a nursing home and begged off for Saturday.”
He claimed to have found three fully loaded magazines holding up to 100 bullets and a bulletproof vest on top of him, along with detonators for the bombs in his car.
In a video that Houck shared, CNN’s John Miller summarized what he knew about Crooks’ actions before the shooting.
“The first thing that got security officials suspicious of him when he arrived at the fairgrounds where Donald Trump was holding his rally was that he was carrying a rangefinder in his hand near the magnetometer area where they were screening people. It’s a device that looks like a small pair of binoculars, but shooters use it to measure the distance when they are setting up a long-distance shot,” Miller said.
“His lack of a weapon wouldn’t have prevented him from passing security, but it did prompt them to question the purpose of the object in his hand.”
“They warned everyone to watch out for this man at that point, but he left the staging area and didn’t show up for a while until the crowd started yelling that there was a man climbing up the roof and that it seemed like he had a weapon,” he added.
Miller described it as an “eerie moment” when Crooks was “taking the rangefinder and gazing through it at the counter-sniper locations.”
Furthermore, a counter-sniper position is observing him via a scope. According to what I understand, there isn’t a gun in the image at this moment, but they are saying, “He’s looking at us looking at him,” Miller added.
Miller said that in Crooks’ vehicle, there were “two remote-controlled IEDs, remote-control devices, in the automobile.”
According to him, officials discovered “three fully loaded magazines with approximately 100 bullets [and] a bulletproof vest,” in addition to “the remote control for those devices found on his person on the roof.”
The question then begs: Did he anticipate getting away from this? If that’s the case, what was the purpose of all that?” he said.
According to CNN, Crooks purchased 50 rounds of ammo and a five-foot ladder earlier on Saturday.
At some point, Crooks reportedly used the ladder to reach the roof, from where he fired shots at Trump, injuring the former president as well as several other protesters and killing one person.
According to CNN, the Secret Service has been attempting to clarify that it is not solely responsible for Saturday security.
According to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, local police were responsible for securing the premises from which gunman Thomas Crooks was shot.
“Local law enforcement was present in that facility and in the surrounding region, overseeing the building’s exterior,” Cheatle stated.
