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Q_ And for the record, before we start delving into these, just to make it very clear for anyone reading this because they’ll have the transcript, but looking at A, can you confirm that is an overhead, sort of looking north on a north-south orientation over the farm grounds and then the AGR building right in the middle?
A: Yes, I can confirm that.
Q: Can you turn to B, please? B is also north-south, kind of an overhead of the entire area. Is that right?
A: Correct.
Q: All right. Can you turn to C? C is looking southwards with AGR at the bottom of the page with the farm ground in the background. Is that right?
A: That is not –
Q: Oh, I’m sorry. Did we get that switched?
A: Yeah, I believe so. C – D is the one –
Q: D is the one I just described?
A: Right.
Q: Okay. I got that switched up. kay. So C is looking northwards, farm ground and the barns in the lower right-hand corner, AGR kind of in the middle at the top looking north.
A: That’s correct.
Q: And then D is looking south with AGR at the bottom, farm grounds on the top?
A: Yes.
Q: Have you worked any prior political rallies or political events?
A: I have not.
Q: Have you ever worked in any capacity with the Secret Service before, any similar event?
A: I have not.
Q: You said you met about 10:30 on July 13th. Just about where did you meet him?
A: So I met him off of Brady Paul Lane. One of the fields there behind the barns was used as a parking area for officers and EMS personnel.
Q: And then he brought you to the AGR building?
A: Correct. I took my patrol car over, which all my equipment is in, and I parked it near the CONEX box at the – in the AGR parking lot.
Currently I’m looking at A.
[Witness marking.]
Q: And you proceeded inside the AGR building where you set up – I believe you set up at the third window from the left?
A: Correct.
[Witness marking.]
Q: Exhibit C may have a better view of that if you’d like. Defer to you.
[Witness marking.]
Q: At any point did you ever think you would be in a counter sniper role that day?
A: I did not.
Q All right. You show up. You meet . tells you, hey, you’re going to do crowd oversight essentially. Okay.
Do you have any sense of whether Secret Service knew of that role that you would be occupying?
A: It was explained to me that the Secret Service would know where we were positioned.
I don’t recall exactly what was said to me. I mean, they knew we were snipers assigned to the second floor of that building and what windows we would be occupying.
Q: Did you talk with Sergeant or Sergeant about the crowd oversight role and your location in fulfilling it, about whether that was good, whether that was bad?
Any thoughts on sort of how you were set up?
A: No, I didn’t have a discussion with them as far as what our role was that day.
Q: All right. Did you ever have a discussion – was Patrolman ever in the AGR building, to your knowledge, early in the morning on the 13th?
A: I don’t know if he was in the building that day or not.
Q: What’s your understanding of the security around AGR, either who would be doing it, whether people would be there, how that would be handled?
A: It was explained that there were to be uniformed officers in the area that day. To my knowledge, that didn’t take place.
If I recall, it may have – I’m guessing. It may have been .
Q: Okay. Did he say which uniformed officers and from what agency?
A: No, he did not.
Q: Okay. Just someone will be around here.
Q: Communications plan, you said you had a cell phone. So you had your cell phone with you?
You were on the group cell phone text thread with the snipers?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you have FirstNet?
A: No, I do not. I have Verizon.
It didn’t seem to affect me, to my knowledge. I was able to receive and respond to text messages from the snipers.
Q: All right. And then you also had a radio?
A: Correct.
Q: And those are the local radios that can go between the different channels. Is that right?
A: That is correct.Q: So you can do ops 4. You can switch to ops 3?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you on most of the day?
A: Ops 4.
Q: Do you ever do the scan, or were you guys just on ops 4?
A: You can set the radios to scan. I did not have my radios set to scan that day.Q: In other words, you said earlier you’re on ops 4. If you have a problem, you report it, and then command relays it out. Is that right?
A: That’s correct.Q: What is your impression of, let’s say, patrol on ops 3 has an issue, what was your impression that day of how that type of information would get to you?
A: My understanding would be that would be relayed on to command, and command would put that out over ops 4.
(I think i is oversimplified view. I’ll try to find an image. No need to invent tapwater.)
Q: id you ever see any drones that day?
A: I don’t recall seeing any drones flying around.
Q: [Woods] leaves approximately 1600, you said, 1620?
A: Correct.
Q: Did he ever send you a text message?
A: Yes, he did.
Q: What did he say to you?
A: He sent a text message just to myself and stating that there was somebody that had, quote, followed our lead into the parking lot and saw leaving the building with his rifle so he knows we are up there.
Q: Okay. Did he ever come back in and alert you of that?
A: I don’t recall if he did come back in the building or not.
Q: Did he ever give any ideas or thoughts on what to do about that, or was he just like, hey, we’re kind of – someone has seen me?
A: Just somebody had seen me.
Q: All right. Let’s walk forward, kind of more into the 1700 time frame. What happens next? And at any point did you observe Mr. Crooks?
A: I did. For the record, I’m referring to my after-action report. Shortly before 1700 hours is when I observed Crooks initially.
Q: I’m sorry. You said 1700?
A: Yes.
What I observed Crooks doing was – to me he looked – he stood out. He was walking around the grassy area between AGR and the secondary fence line, kept looking up, looking at the building. One point that is what raised my suspicion is he was looking directly at the window I was positioned at.
Q: Do you have that in front of you?22
A: Yes.
[Witness marking.]
Q: Sort of in that little gap between the first and second buildings of the AGR complex. Is that right?
A: Yes.
To the west of the building.
Q: How many people other than Mr. Crooks were around that area at the time?
A: So initially throughout the entire day nobody was in that area.
In that whole area between the AGR and the outlying fence.
The final speaker stops speaking, and there was a period of time where they were playing music and stuff prior to President Trump arriving. That is when people started gathering in that area. Roughly 4:30 p.m. people started gathering along the fence. Initially it started off with two or three people, and then the crowd started to grow from there.
Q: At its peak or, let’s say, moving it to 1800, about how many people were there, give or take estimate?
A: I would estimate 150 people.
Q: Lots of folks?
A: Yes.
They have had set up lawn chairs. There was a female riding a horse back and forth with a flag up and down the fence line.
Q: Did that raise any concerns for you, any thoughts about, hey, what are all of these people doing here?
A: I understood what they were doing there. I didn’t understand why they were allowed to be there.
I will say the Pennsylvania State Police and a trooper and a female sheriff’s deputy attempted to get them to leave the fence line. But as soon as they walked over and asked the people to move, they started moving. As soon as the officers walked away, the people went right back to where they were at.
And at one point there was a maintenance – the gentleman from AGR that was in charge of maintenance that let us in the building originally, he also showed up along the fence line trying to get people to move, and they weren’t having it.
Q: Essentially there weren’t enough people to disperse that crowd?
A: That’s correct.
(I thought he was not the owner.)
Q: Okay. To your knowledge, was that ever radioed in prior to the shooting, that, hey, we need some help out here and, hey, get those folks away?
A: I’m not aware of that.
Q: Let’s go back to your first sighting of Mr. Crooks. So you see him kind of wandering around. What happens next?
A: He – like I said, he looked up at the window I was positioned at and kept looking at it. He walked directly towards the window and underneath of it up against the building to the point where I couldn’t see him.
That made me feel as though he was looking or could – was potentially looking at the window to see if there was somebody inside the building. And when he went up against the building to where I couldn’t look down on him, I found that to be very suspicious.
Q: Now, I think this has been made clear, but you were not – your rifle was recessed from the window. Is that right?
A: That’s correct. And there was a screen in the window.
(curtain?)
Q: To your knowledge, would it have been possible for him to have seen up into the window where you guys were?
A: Potentially. I can’t speak 100 percent. I can tell you that having screens in the windows with the lights out in a given room that that window is part of, it is very difficult to see inside the room.
Q: Did Sergeant ever observe Mr. Crooks around that time?
A: So what had happened was I had observed him. When he disappeared along the lower edge of the building, I couldn’t see where he went any further. I walked over and spoke to , and I asked him if he had seen this individual. And I described him with the long hair, gray T-shirt, khaki shorts. At that time had not observed him.
A short time later tells me that he does see the individual I described.
So I walk back over to , and at that point had showed me – he had taken two photographs of Crooks. I identified him as that was the individual I was describing earlier. At that time he was sitting on the concrete wall at the southwestern edge of the AGR building that we were in scrolling through his phone.
Q: Okay. And you guys see him. You take the picture. What’s the next interaction or involvement you guys have with observing Mr. Crooks?
A: At about – it was minutes later. I had returned back to my post in that office. [Nicol] yells to me, “[Murcko], he’s out here again. He has a rangefinder.”
I would estimate about 5:10 p.m.
(About 1707 - he had a performance with Elvis.)
Q: And now maybe I missed this. Approximately when was the first time you saw him? I thought you said 1700, so obviously I misheard that.
A: Well, what I have written here was shortly before 1700.
Q: So you guys see him, see him with the rangefinder. Tell me how that reaction happens from there?
A: So once had seen him with the rangefinder – I did not personally observe him with the rangefinder – he again returned to that cement wall area of the AGR building. And then, according to , he walked north along the western side of the building.
[Witness marking.]
p35
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- He appears on Malis’ dashcam, the time is an issue (at least 12 hours shift).
- Murcko saw him minutes before 1700, thought.
- Walks into the Elvis clip around 1706
- Murcko saw him again around 1710.
- Minutes later Greg saw him with rangefinder.