Beaver County officials speak out to clear up confusion on role during Trump’s Butler rally

BEAVER, Pa. — It’s a moment in history with multiple sides of the story.

“There are so many opportunities for stories where boys in blue put their lives on the line to protect the people and ran to the gunfire,” said Pat Young, the Commander of Beaver County ESU.

Young said that’s just what his Beaver County ESU members did as they tracked Thomas Crooks an hour before shots were fired at former President Donald Trump’s rally on July 13. As more information comes out about that day, he wants to make their piece of the story clear.

“At 5:41 p.m. that message was sent to tactical command at Butler that this subject did have a rangefinder,” Young said.

This coming from one of his snipers’ positions in the adjacent AGR building along with a Butler sniper. Both tasked with looking out into the crowd at the windows assigned by Butler ESU.

In Tuesday morning’s Senate hearing, the acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe Jr. showed a photo from a window showing the roof where the shooter set up as the vantage point of those two snipers.

“Looking left why was the assailant not seen? We were told that the building was going to be covered, that there had been a face-to-face that afternoon. Our team leads met, this was the view,” Rowe Jr. said.

But that’s not the window Beaver County said they were assigned by Butler from the Secret Service. Rather they were on the opposite side of the building with no roofline in sight.

“The Butler ESU sniper and Beaver ESU sniper were at the entire other end of the building in a covert position with a screen in front of them as to not be noticed by people,” said Nate Bible, the Beaver County DA.

Bible said their role was looking into the secure perimeter and the assumption is that someone inside the perimeter was looking out. That’s where the Secret Service said it messed up — by not being clearer on what was needed in securing different locations. Then add in these local players not having direct access to the Secret Service.

So is there a better plan for the future especially when it comes to communication?

“I think the honest answer is better collaboration and cooperation working as a team, that’s truly the takeaway from all of this,” Young said.

One clarification coming from the Secret Service was that it was having connection issues with its unmanned drone system so there were no drones up during the rally. Rowe said that had it been working, they may have spotted Crooks’ drone earlier and identified him as a threat sooner.

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