‘We lost sight of him’: Radio traffic shows failed search for Trump rally shooter

No one from the Secret Service, the agency primarily responsible for protecting Trump, was inside that white trailer to hear the message, according to two law enforcement officials. Instead, the federal agency had its own mobile command post with Pennsylvania State Police almost 300 yards away — and had no direct, open communication line to the local police hub. The local commander inside the trailer had to pick up his cellphone and dial a state trooper to relay the message, the two officials said.

The lack of a direct communication link would later hamper the ability of the Secret Service to quickly grasp the threat posed by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks as local police searched for him over the next 29 minutes, resulting in the federal agency’s gravest security lapse in decades, a Post examination found. At 6:11 p.m., Crooks opened fire from a rooftop, unleashing eight bullets that left the former president wounded, one rallygoer dead and two others critically injured.

The Post obtained a previously unreported transcript of more than seven hours of encrypted radio communications by local police at the rally that day and interviewed multiple law enforcement officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The transcript and accounts provide the clearest picture yet of the minute-by-minute hunt for Crooks, and show how he evaded police and climbed onto the roof of a nearby building undetected. Police lost track of Crooks for 20 minutes after he was seen with the range finder, the transcript shows. When he was spotted again, walking toward the area where he would gain access to the rooftop of what local police called the “AGR building,” an officer mischaracterized where he was headed, directing his colleagues to the wrong side of the building.

The Post examination also shows that communication between the Secret Service and the local police was disjointed and time-consuming, helping to explain why Secret Service agents closest to Trump were taken by surprise when gunfire erupted. On three occasions, a local officer inside the Butler County command post had to relay information about Crooks to the Secret Service hub by cellphone — on a day when cell service was balky and unreliable.

That method was too slow when seconds counted. A local police officer spotted Crooks on a rooftop with a gun and radioed in to the local command center that he was “armed” approximately 30 seconds before the shooting, according to the transcript of the radio communications and Secret Service officials, but that message was not passed on to the Secret Service command post before Crooks started shooting, the agency has acknowledged.

The two law enforcement officers who said the command posts had no direct line of communication — and that information about Crooks had to be relayed by cellphone — were Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger and a law enforcement official familiar with the police response, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters of ongoing investigation.

Patrick Young, commander of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, which supplied local officers to secure the rally, said that it’s important that law enforcement agencies share one command post where information can be received and transmitted quickly.

“All the key stakeholders should be in the same room,” Young said in an interview. “That alleviates any communications problems.”

A Pennsylvania State Police spokesman stressed that state troopers were acting in a supporting role and referred questions to the Secret Service.

At a news conference Friday, acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe Jr. acknowledged that there were separate communications hubs that did not effectively share information in vital moments. “There might have been radio traffic that we missed. We have to be better on that,” he said.

Rowe repeatedly emphasized that the rally shooting was a failure by the Secret Service, not local law enforcement. “If the large majority of our partners are in a unified command post or in a different location, we need to probably be there, too,” he said.

“We’re certainly going to examine the communication aspect very closely,” Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said in response to questions from The Post.

‘I don’t have any service’

The radio transmission about the suspicious male with a range finder set off a flurry of messages between local officers on the ground and supervisors stationed in the Butler County command center trailer.

“Do you know what color shirt?” one sheriff’s deputy asked.

“White shirt with a hat,” another answered.

In a separate channel for local tactical officers — not audible on the channel used by sheriff’s deputies — the countersniper who first reported the range finder was giving a different description: “Gray T-shirt, light-colored khaki shorts.”

The local officers lost track of Crooks, and would not see him again for 20 minutes, the transcript shows.

Monitoring the three encrypted communication channels inside the trailer, located next to a lakeside warehouse to the south of the rally site, was Sgt. Ed Lenz, the tactical commander for the Butler County mobile unit, according to the law enforcement official familiar with the police response.

He was joined by a deputy commander in the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, a Butler County sheriff’s sergeant and a county employee, the official said.

Lenz did not respond to an email with detailed questions.

When Lenz heard the message about the range finder, he used his cellphone to call a state police officer stationed in the Secret Service trailer at 5:44 p.m., according to the official and call logs. State police Sgt. Joseph Olayer, the call recipient, relayed the information to his Secret Service counterparts in the trailer, the official said.

Olayer declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris acknowledged in congressional testimony last month that someone from Butler County’s tactical unit had called a state trooper inside the Secret Service command post and then sent a text message with a photograph of Crooks. The state police officer was told to forward the image to a separate Secret Service number, Paris said.

Minutes after Lenz passed on the suspicious-person report to the state police sergeant, Lenz radioed to local officers that help was on the way, the transcript shows.

“PSP (Pennsylvania State Police) and sheriffs should be in route,” Lenz told officers on the ground at 5:45 p.m.

As reinforcements made their way to help, officers tried to circulate photos of Crooks, but cellphone reception problems got in the way, the transcript shows.

“I’m trying to forward photographs of the individual,” said a local tactical team member at 5:47 p.m.

“Units be advised internet and cell service is down,” another officer on that channel said a minute later.

“Your picture is probably not going to go through because I don’t have any service,” a sheriff’s deputy radioed at 5:49 p.m.

Around this time, a Butler County tactical officer said he had “notified Hercules,” a code name for Secret Service countersniper units, according to the transcript. It’s not clear how that communication was sent. But at this point, the Secret Service has said, Crooks was considered a suspicious person, not a threat. The search for the suspicious male remained an endeavor mostly left for local police.

Lenz enlisted more officers, including police handling traffic on roads outside the rally site.

“Our sierra units lost visual of him,” Lenz told the traffic-control officers at 5:54 p.m., using the code name for local tactical officers. “I believe you guys are outside of that fence, if you come upon him.”

Crooks would resurface eight minutes later, setting off an intensifying manhunt.

‘Someone’s on the roof’

At 6:02 p.m., the same local sniper who first radioed in the message about the range finder was on the second floor of the building owned by Agr International. From a northwest window, facing away from the rally site, he glimpsed the suspect again just as Trump was preparing to take the podium.

“All right, subject is in between the AGR building. He has a backpack,” said Sgt. Greg Nicol, a Beaver County sniper. Nicol had been assigned to look out over the rally site from a window on the opposite side of the building, but he had moved to look for the suspect, according to Young, Nicol’s commander.

Nicol did not respond to requests for comment. But in an interview, Beaver County District Attorney Nathan Bible, whose office oversees the county’s tactical team, praised Nicol for moving within the building to look for Crooks, calling it “good old-fashioned police work.”

“He realized somebody needs to find this guy,” Bible told The Post.

From his vantage point on the second floor, Nicol was unable to discern where Crooks was headed, though, the transcript shows.

Crooks was walking to the northeast, toward an area between two wings of the complex of warehouses at Agr International. The space was enclosed on three sides, a dead end. But Nicol suggested Crooks was headed in the direction of a gas station on the other side of the building.

“He just went towards the Sheetz,” Nicol said, referring to the gas station about a quarter of a mile away.

That information quickly circulated, the transcript shows.

Inside the Butler County command center, Lenz again called Olayer in the Secret Service command post to pass on a message during a 40-second call at 6:03 p.m., according to the law enforcement official familiar with the police response and call logs.

The message was also passed on to local police units.

“All units be advised also that individual is headed towards Sheetz,” a sheriff’s deputy radioed to his colleagues at 6:04 p.m.

Instead, two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation said, Crooks made his way to an HVAC unit next to the Agr building. He scaled that equipment to gain access to the roof of the building, the officials said. Video obtained by the FBI shows Crooks climbing onto the roof at 6:06 p.m., FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said in congressional testimony this week.

By the time Crooks was on the roof, officers were still focused on finding him on the ground.

“He’s reportedly between the building up here at AGR somewhere,” a local officer on the channel for traffic control said at 6:06 p.m. “I’m guessing the west side, east side looks clear.”

In the command post, Lenz radioed to the tactical units that local police had the building surrounded. “They should have a fairly good perimeter. If you get another visual let me know,” he said at 6:07 p.m.

Less than a minute later, Crooks was spotted again, this time up above.

“Someone’s on the roof,” a local officer radioed at 6:08 p.m. “I have someone on the roof with white shorts.”

Video published by Fox News shows Crooks running along the roof of the Agr building around this time.

Inside the local command, Lenz radioed to clarify that the person on the roof was not a police officer.

“We do not have assets on the roof,” he said. “That is not us.”

At 6:09, Lenz again dialed the state trooper to inform him about the suspect on the roof, according to the law enforcement official and call logs.

At the same time, a local officer said over the radio that he had a good view of the male on the roof.

“We got him,” the officer said. “We don’t have him in custody yet, but he’s right straight in front of me by the pine tree standing upwards. He had a backpack.”

The officer’s description appears to match a location on the east side of the complex, near the building where Crooks opened fire. But within 25 seconds, Crooks had slipped out of the officer’s range of vision.

“Lost sight of him, trooper was chasing him, trying to follow him around the building,” the officer said.

On the other side of the complex, bystanders gathered under a tree about 160 feet from the building had a clearer view of Crooks, who was prone on the rooftop, video shows.

“Someone is on top of the roof, look, there he is right there,” a spectator says in a video of that scene. Closer to the building, a police officer craned his neck to see on top, but apparently couldn’t locate Crooks due to the angle.

A video taken around the same time by Dave Stewart, a 35-year-old Pennsylvania resident, showed several law enforcement officers struggling to spot Crooks from south of the building, the side closest to the rally site.

“Last time I seen him was by the pine tree between the two buildings, the small walkway joining the buildings,” the officer who earlier spotted Crooks on the roof reported at 6:10 p.m.

At 6:11 p.m., a local officer hoisted up to the roofline by a colleague reported the first sign that the man on the roof was, in fact, a deadly threat.

“He’s armed,” the officer said, according to the transcript. “I saw him, he’s laying down.”

Local officials have previously said the officer lowered himself because his hands were on the roofline, preventing him from pulling his weapon as Crooks pointed his rifle in the officer’s direction.

“He’s got a long gun,” the officer said again into the radio.

Seconds later, Lenz radioed the Butler County quick response force, a team responsible for responding to any potential coordinated attack on Trump. The team was based in the barns behind the rally stage, documents show, but had moved out into a field and were facing the Agr building, according to video footage recorded two minutes earlier.

“QRF from command. You need to deploy to the AGR building,” Lenz said. He added, using shorthand for Butler Township police, “BT has a male on the roof with a long gun. They have made contact with him.”

As he was passing on the directive, Lenz interrupted himself: “Shots fired,” he said at 6:11 p.m.

The law enforcement official familiar with the police response said officials in the local command center were not able to pass on the message about an armed man to the Secret Service command post. There was not enough time to make the cellphone call.

Jonathan Baran, Szu Yu Chen, William Neff and Imogen Piper contributed to this report.