Donald Trump landed in Milwaukee in a new video, but his ear injury is not visible far away.
President @realDonaldTrump greeted by USAF Airmen in Milwaukee! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/5AUWSZF83l
— Margo Martin (@margomartin) July 14, 2024
Greg Smith, a local resident of Butler, Pennsylvania, did not manage to enter the Butler Farm Show grounds on July 13th for former President Donald Trump’s rally, but he still intended to hear what Trump had to say, positioning himself outside the venue. From there, Smith witnessed the harrowing events unfold as a male shooter fired shots into the rally, one of which struck Trump’s right ear and injured three rally attendees, tragically resulting in one fatality.
“I had a direct line of sight, directly to the backside of that roof. And I saw a guy crawling up the roof—bear-crawling up the roof—with a rifle,” Smith recounted to The Epoch Times. He and his companions immediately spotted the U.S. Secret Service nearby and tried desperately to alert them to the imminent threat.
“We could see them looking at us. I stood there for about one or two minutes, pointing at the guy on the roof. And the police were running around, down and around the bottom of the building,” he described. Despite their efforts, Smith observed, “And we were like, ‘Hey, man, there was a guy on the roof with a rifle.’ And the police were just running around, don’t know what they were doing. And the next thing you know, the guy crawled up to the peak and took about four shots. I don’t know how many shots it was exactly. That’s what we saw.”
Smith strongly believes that the Secret Service agents subsequently shot the same man he had witnessed on the roof.
The Secret Service confirmed that they neutralized the suspected shooter, who had attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue. The FBI later identified the assailant as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and indicated that the investigation into the incident is ongoing, categorizing it as an attempted assassination. However, they have not yet determined a motive for the attack.
In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, panic ensued as attendees fled the scene. Smith, wearing a red “Trump 2020” visor, condemned the violence, emphasizing, “There is no place for this in politics. We dislike Joe Biden, we are not out trying to harm him. There is no place for that. That’s not America. That’s not what people should be doing.”
