In short:
Police have released new bodycam footage from the day of the attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump.
A series of clips show the moment before Thomas Crooks fired and the aftermath.
What’s next?
The FBI has launched a formal investigation into the attempted assassination.
Police have released new bodycam footage showing the moment an officer made contact with the man who attempted to assassinate former president Donald Trump.
Warning: This story contains graphic details and imagery.
Several bodycam clips were released on Thursday local time, with one showing the moment a police officer was hoisted on the roof before gunman Thomas Crooks attempted to kill Trump on July 13 at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The first video from the bodycam does not have audio but the officer can be seen peeking onto the roof and quickly dropping down after spotting Crooks with his AR-15-style rifle.
Just 40 seconds later, Crooks fired eight shots. He was then killed by a Secret Service sniper.
The incident injured the Republican presidential candidate, killed 50-year-old volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore and left two others critically injured.
When audio was later picked up on the bodycam, the officer who saw Crooks could be heard shouting “he’s straight up” and asking “who has eyes on him”.
“He was right where you picked me up bro”, he continued.
“He was on that left side.”
(Supplied: Bethel Park School District)
At one point after the shots were fired, the officer could be heard shouting “don’t pull up your head, he’s right there” to other law enforcement officers.
Conversation that could be heard over the radio included an officer saying: “We have two civilians – tending to them. I need an ambulance in the back.”
Near the end of the footage, armed officers are seen scaling the building.
The footage then cuts to a clip showing the scene on the roof after Crooks was shot dead. His body is seen lying on the roof next to a rifle and a blood trail.
The new footage was released after CNN submitted a public record request to Butler Township Police and appealed when they initially refused to release video involving officers or personnel related to the shooting at the rally.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency was reviewing the footage, CNN reported.
“The US Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” he said.
“The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump was a US Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”
About two hours before the shooting, Crooks flew a drone over the area about 180 metres from the stage where Trump spoke to the crowd, and live-streamed footage for about 11 minutes.
Crude explosive devices were later recovered from Crooks’s car and home. They were designed to be detonated remotely. Crooks had a transmitter with him.
The FBI believes he would not have been successful had he tried to detonate the devices.
FBI director Christopher Wray last month said Crooks, 20, searched online for information on the John F Kennedy assassination.
“Analysis of a laptop that the investigation ties to the shooter reveals that on July 6, he did a Google search for — quote — ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy’,'” Mr Wray told a US House Judiciary Committee.
Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated former president Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.
Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the Secret Service on July 24, after coming under scrutiny following the assassination attempt.
She had told a US congressional oversight hearing that the incident was the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, adding that she took “full responsibility”.
Posted , updated
