A local police officer missed when he shot at would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks during the sniper’s attack on former President Donald Trump on July 13, according to testimony from the medical examiner.
Ariel Goldschmidt, Allegheny County medical examiner, on Thursday told a bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempt that his examination of Crooks found one bullet fragment and related wound that came from a single shot to the head.
Dr. Goldschmidt conducted his autopsy of Crooks on July 14, the day after the shooting, and determined he died from “a high-velocity gunshot wound to the head with an entrance wound of the left upper lip.”
That shot, according to the FBI, came from a Secret Service countersniper.
Before the Secret Service sniper’s kill shot, a local tactical officer working under the Butler County Emergency Services unit fired a single round at Crooks, who was on the roof of a nearby building, from the ground below.
The FBI has confirmed that the shot occurred, but has said no forensic evidence shows it hit Crooks or his rifle.
The local officer who took the shot at Crooks did not testify at the task force’s hearing, but the commander of the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, Edward Lenz, relayed his account.
Mr. Lenz said the officer had moved from a barn behind the stage on the Butler Farm Show grounds, the rally site, to the adjacent AGR International complex to help respond to reports of a suspicious person, who later turned out to be Crooks. When shots rang out, the officer quickly identified where they were coming from: the roof of the AGR building.
“He observed the shooter, he shouldered his rifle, he acquired his target, and he fired one round at the shooter, which caused the shooter to recoil and briefly fall out of sight,” Mr. Lenz said.
The officer took his shot “less than six seconds after shots began” using his short-barrel rifle at a distance of approximately 110 yards, he said.
Rep. Mark Green, Tennessee Republican, asked Mr. Lenz if the officer’s shot hit Crooks.
“He’s very confident that his round was on target,” Mr. Lenz said.
Rep. Clay Higgins, Louisiana Republican and a member of the House task force, stirred up questions about the local officer’s shot when he issued a report over the summer saying it hit Crooks’ “rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up.”
“He stopped Crooks and, importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ [automatic rifle],” Mr. Higgins said, noting he wasn’t certain but was “99% sure,” based on eyewitness reports. “This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his eighth shot.”
The FBI’s laboratory division test-fired Crooks’ rifle and found it remained fully operational.
At Thursday’s hearing, Mr. Higgins identified the local officer who took the shot as Aaron Zaliponi and quoted him as saying he fired a round at Crooks and saw him go down.
“When I say goes down, it wasn’t like he was ducking to get out of the way. I mean, I know I hit him,” Mr. Higgins said, reading Mr. Zaliponi’s testimony.
Mr. Higgins asked the medical examiner if injuries on Crooks’ shoulders could have been caused by a combined impact of the local cop’s shot hitting Crooks’ rifle and fragmenting and the Secret Service sniper’s shot.
“No, it’s not possible,” Dr. Goldschmidt said.
Mr. Higgins asked Dr. Goldschmidt if he knew where the local officer’s shot went. Dr. Goldschmidt said he didn’t know.
Mr. Higgins then asked if it might have gone all the way through Crooks, “and you had no way of knowing that because it was in the same wound that was further affected by shot number 10,” from the Secret Service sniper.
“There was no evidence on the body of that occurring,” Dr. Goldschmidt said.
“That’s different than impossible,” Mr. Higgins concluded.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee also interviewed the local officer, quoting from some of his testimony without naming him in an interim report on the panel’s separate probe of the assassination attempt.
The officer told the Senate Committee he shouldered his weapon as Crooks fired his eighth round. He said he “saw the gas come from the muzzle, I heard the snap, and then immediately I returned fire.”
The local officer said he thought he shot Crooks in the right shoulder or right side of his neck.
Crooks “did not get another shot off after I engaged,” he said, noting that Crooks “went down and slowly came back up.”
The officer said he was “ready to press the second” shot when the Secret Service countersniper “took him out.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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