WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Secret Service’s acting director said on Friday that local police in Pennsylvania warned that there was a man with a gun on a roof before the July 13 attempted assassination of Donald Trump, but the message did not reach its agents on time.
Local authorities and Secret Service agents were using different communications channels, which prevented the warning from getting through before a 20-year-old assailant opened fire on the Republican presidential candidate, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe told reporters.
“In the final 30 seconds – which has been the focus of what happened before the assailant opened fire – there (were) clearly radio transmissions that may have happened on that local radio net that we did not have,” Rowe said. “This was a Secret Service failure. That roof line should have been covered. We should have had better eyes on (that).”
In testimony to Congress on Tuesday, Rowe had blamed the failure on local law enforcement while also saying he was “ashamed” of the security lapse that occurred on the day of the shooting.
Rowe also noted that the agency had not been present in a command post set up by local law enforcement in Butler, Pennsylvania for the outdoor campaign rally by the former president.
The first shooting of a U.S. president or major party presidential candidate in more than four decades was a glaring security lapse that led last week to former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation under bipartisan congressional pressure.
Officials have said that Thomas Crooks, 20, fired the shots that wounded Trump’s right ear, killed one rally attendee and wounded two others with an AR-15-style rifle, before law enforcement snipers shot and killed him.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Costas Pitas; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Chizu Nomiyama)
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