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CNN just reported the following:

In the 48 hours before he opened fire on former President Donald Trump, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks made a series of stops in and around his suburban Pittsburgh hometown.

On Friday, he went to a shooting range where he was a member, and practiced firing, a law enforcement official told CNN. The next morning, Crooks went to a Home Depot, where he bought a five-foot ladder, and a gun store, where he purchased 50 rounds of ammunition, the official said.

Then, Crooks drove his Hyundai Sonata about an hour north, joining thousands of people from around the region who flocked to Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He parked the car outside the rally, with an improvised explosive device hidden in the trunk that was wired to a transmitter he carried, the official said. Then, investigators believe, he used his newly-bought ladder to scale a nearby building, and opened fire on the former president.

IF this is true, it is yet another glaring indication that security was simply pulled from the building located about 130 yards north of where Trump was scheduled to speak.

Naturally the notion of Crooks toting a ladder up to the building without being observed and stopped seems beyond belief. The CNN report mentions nothing about a roof rack on his car, and even a telescoping ladder probably wouldn’t fit in a Hyundai Sonata.

An alternative theory is that the alleged “law enforcement” official quoted by CNN is misdirection—that is, that in fact it was conveyed to Crooks that the ladder would already be in place upon his arrival. Given that the building was the most logical place to post police sentries, one wonders if the ladder was originally erected for police officers who then—for some reason—left their post and left the ladder in place.

IF Crooks brought the ladder with him, he must have visited the building in advance to ascertain the roof height and a favorable place to erect the ladder (on a section of wall conveniently obscured by a cluster of ornamental cypress trees).

The following image is a still from a video taken from a helicopter after Crooks was shot in the head by a counter-sniper.

The top arrow points to his body. Just below it is his rifle lying a few feet from him. The arrow to the right points to his backpack. The far right arrow points to a ladder. Note the large flow of blood downslope of his body in the following closeup.

The aerial video appears to have been taken before any law enforcement officers made it onto the roof. I initially wondered if it was taken right after an officer checked Crooks’s body to make sure he was dead, then separated the weapon from his body, and then (for some reason) left the scene.

However, the totality of elements displayed in the photograph indicates that the most likely explanation is that—AFTER Crooks fired the shots—he tossed the weapon to his left and was trying to crawl backwards to return to the ladder when he was shot in the head.

Note there is no way he could have rested his rifle on the ridge to fire at Trump without being seen by the counter-snipers, who were standing on a higher elevation on the barn roof. In order to retreat hastily back down the slope, Crooks must have failed to keep his head sufficiently low to evade the counter-sniper’s shot.

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