hello KHunter,
no, the scenario I go for is still based on the high roof behind crooks, which is the highest building at the AGR parking:
from my point of view, the shooter from this location was a professional sniper who fired the first 3 rounds towards Trump.
originally, I assumed that this shooter would also have fired the subsequent 5 rapid-fire shots, but since the bodycam footage has been released that shows the SWAT officer firing the 9th bullet at crooks, I am no longer convinced that the high roof shooter fired the the subsequent 5 rounds too.
so, this is the situation how I see it now:
- crooks had to be at 18h11m33 in position on the roof of AGR building 6
- he had been running late for whatever reason, which explains why he is seen running/jogging/walking fast on the roofs in the James Copenhaver video
- a bit before that time, he assumed his position on the roof of AGR building 6, and
- at exactly 18h11m33s, the first shot was fired by the professional on the high roof behind crooks
- the first 3 shots were fired in the first 2 seconds that have been registered by various sources, and from my point of view, these were higher caliber sniper rifle bullets of about 165-180 grains
- the first bullet grazed Trump’s ear, scratched the right/southern bleachers and punctured the hydraulic hose of the JCB forklift that kept up the speakers
- the 2nd and 3rd bullet injured David Dutch and James Copenhaver
- then there was a pause of just under 1 second
- then the 5 rapid fire shots were fired. here we have two options:
- crooks fired those rounds
- the sniper on the high roof used a different rifle and fired these 5 rounds
- these 5 bullets injured several people and killed Corey Comperatore
- I do not know in which order these people were hit, but there were at least 6 victims:
- Trump’s ear got grazed
- David Dutch had entry/exit wounds and stood in the right/south bleachers
- James Copenhaver has unknown, but “life altering” injuries and stood halfway in the back of the right/south bleachers
- Corey Comperatore died from a head shot and stood in the left/north bleachers
- the nephew of a congressman had a neck injury and was seated in the middle or right bleachers
- a woman received medical care, but it is unknown where she was injured
- after the 5 shots were fired, there was a pause of just under 1 second
- after the 1st shot was fired, there was a SWAT officer who walked from the tents behind Trump to the green near the first fence towards the AGR site. the shot fired by this SWAT officer is indicated by the orangish line in the picture below
- after a pause of about 9 seconds
- the 10th shot was fired which finished crooks off
there are a couple of degrees of freedom in this scenario based on the many remarkable observations:
- I do not believe that the SWAT officer injured crooks with the 9th bullet. he may have irritated him, but given the fact that crooks was able to sit upright and turn his rifle towards the witnesses near the trees on his right, it is highly unlikely that bullet 9 caused much harm
- bullet 10 took crooks out with high certainty. I do not know where that bullet came from, but it is not likely that it was a sniper on the barns behind Trump, as they use a high power sniper rifle that, imho, would have caused much more damage
- I think bullet 10 was fired by the SWAT officer who fired bullet 9, or by the Washington Co sniper across the green (cfr. the yellowish circle and line of fire in the picture below)
I also believe that the snipers on the barns behind Trump returned fire very quickly after the first shots were fired, but as they did not have a direct line of sight, their bullets must have pruned the trees (cfr. the red circle in the image above).
so, this is my view on this matter…
meanwhile, I have been programming a ballistic trajectories calculator based on an open source library (GNU Ballistics Library download | SourceForge.net), and I am now integrating these trajectories in the kml files I released about a month ago.
this integration of ballistic trajectories took a little longer than expected as a consequence of the remarkable unforgiving nature of this forum:
- if you do not react to whatever allegations are made, you get buried under piles of nasty critiques and critiques
- several people do not seem to be willing to consider whatever alternative view but prefer to push their not-so-hidden agenda
and countering these messages consumes much precious time, but if that time is not invested in neutralizing critiques, they assume silence equals approval, and that has to be avoided…
sometimes I get the impression that they launch a coordinated distributed denial of service attack on people’s resources in the hope that they will surrender and give up, but (as you may have noticed by now) that is not my nature: I’d rather die than surrender.
all this introduced some delays in releasing a new version of my kml files that reflect how I see the scenario described above with the ballistic trajectories…
about terminology: I am not in favour of using the terms “second shooter”, because from my initial point of view, there was only 1 shooter.
with my current view, there may be 2 shooters, but the main shooter is certainly not the “2nd” shooter…
about your question wrt the back tracing of bullets: back tracing bullets is sheer nonsense for the simple reason that there are so many unknowns: the exact position of the podium, the position of Trump, the position of the bleachers and the JCB hydraulic lift, the location where the first bullet interacted with the bleachers, the elevation of the different points of interest and actors, etc, etc.
in the past month, the exact location of that interaction with these bleachers has shifted with about 2 ft, the elevation and height of the podium, Trump himself and even his ear have changed by several inches, and no matter which heights or distances or positions change, the back tracing snake oil salesman always comes back with the same “back traced shooting position”…
really: back tracing bullets with these parameters is sheer nonsense.
so, my approach to find out what is plausible or not is very simple: I now have the ballistic trajectories, and can plot the bullet’s path from whatever potential shooter’s position and see where the bullet arrives, taking into account various wind speeds, bullet weights, ballistic coefficients, etc, etc.
I am now adding the average speed for each of the trajectory points such that the audio analysts can easily calculate their snik-boom or something like that…
the margins of error are very small as far as I am concerned when using a sensible approach that minimizes the number of assumptions and degrees of freedom…
with my approach, you simply take a position from which you want the ballistic trajectory to start from (can be any position on any roof, vent, window, door, tree, etc) and where it should pass by/through, and then you see where the bullet passes on its way from the shooter to the indicated target, and if that makes sense, we are happy, if that trajectory does not make sense, you use different parameters (caliber, wind speed, muzzle velocity, etc)