Trump shooter spotted by officers at least three times in 30 minutes before he opened fire

A police sniper took a picture of Thomas Matthew Crooks roughly 30 minutes before the 20-year-old squeezed off mutiple rounds at Donald Trump during a rally on Saturday, one of several potentially missed opportunities to stop the would-be assasin, according to reports.

Crooks, a loner who is said to have been rejected by his high school shooting club for being such a bad shot he was considered “dangerous,” was spotted on the roof of the American Glass Research building by members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, some 30 minutes before the first bullet flew, Pittsburgh’s WPXI-TV reported.

The ESU team was using the one-story building, adjacent to the event grounds, as a staging area, when one of them noticed Crooks at roughly 5:45 p.m., sitting down and looking at his phone, according to the outlet, which said the sniper notified dispatch, then snapped a photo of Crooks. When Crooks took out a rangefinder, the sniper reportedly radioed commanding officers but no police response was mounted at the time, CBS News reports.

Another officer had seen Crooks on the ground a short time earlier and called him in as “suspicious,” WPXI reported, prompting a search of the immediate area. However, the news channel said, Crooks by then had disappeared.

Police had yet another chance to intercept Crooks about a minute-and-a-half before the shooting started, when concerned bystanders alerted law enforcement to his presence on the rooftop, according to video posted to social media by the Yeshiva World News.

“Everyone’s pointing… someone’s on top of the roof, look!” a rallygoer can be heard saying in the footage. “There he is, right there!”

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