One of the final photos of would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks shows the 20-year-old gunman crawling on the ground and seemingly scoping out a spot from which to shoot at former President Donald Trump nearly one hour before the attack.
The image was taken around 5:30 p.m. Saturday by a local police counter-sniper officer who reported that Crooks was a suspicious person on the grounds outside Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, news station WXPI reported.
Crooks can be seen in the photo sporting long brown hair and glasses while wearing a gray T-shirt representing the popular YouTube gun channel Demolition Ranch. It was unclear in the picture if Crooks had a gun on him then.
Law enforcement sources told the station that the sniper, a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, searched the grounds for Crooks after sending the picture, but he had moved from the location where the picture was taken.
Around 5:45 p.m. — 26 minutes before the shooting — the same Beaver County cop spotted Crooks a second time, now on the roof, took a second picture and called it in to the command center.