The trouble here is, Crooks was in his (most likely prone) shooting position when shot 9 comes in. After that he erects up his upper body quite a bit and makes the turn around. I think he even switches to the next roof lane with this move. At one point it seems like he’s pointing his rifle against the spectators on the west side. I don’t believe he targets them, it’s just a part of his turn around move.
When you look very closely and frame by frame in the Jon Malis video, he is laying down again and the rifle is most likely pointing south in direction of the stage area. Just an instant later shot 10 comes in and takes him out.
Gary from Paramount Tactical took gps elevation data with his drone. It’s measured in meters above sea level, so the roof where Crooks was is 381.171 m and the southern barn roof where the CS was is 383.441 m (or 384 m when you take the rifle stand the sniper used into account). The distance between those two positions is 168.191 m
red line would represent the trajectory of shot 10. Maximum descending angle without hitting the ridge is less than 1°. AGR 6 roof, if it’s a 1:12 pich, would be 4.76°.
So it very well could have been a counter-sniper on the grandstands, as far as matching the distance, but the angle doesn’t seem to make lots of sense in regards to Crooks apparent head injury.
He would need to have been turned quite a bit for left side entry, right side exit.
He was sort of twisted as he sat up. Maybe he turned even more to try and escape or even to look behind him and that’s when the actual shot 10 happened??
the orange line is the line of sight from crooks’ position via Trump over/through the bleachers and to the JCB hydraulic lift.
the red line is the line of fire of the SWAT officer who is associated with the 9th bullet
the green line is obstructed by a couple of trees, but is a line of fire that would create the entry wound near crooks’ left chin, exit wound near his right chin and blow away part of the stock while aiming in the direction of the rally area…
this green line is the only location that
is not too obstructed and
is at 400 yards from crooks’ head on the roof
that would explain away the entry/exit/stock damage
the yellow line is unobstructed and would result in very similar damage to crooks and the rifle’s stock, but it is at 316 yards
if crooks was looking towards the witnesses near the trees (on the right of the image), it would make sense that one of the snipers on the southern/right barns behind Trump would have taken the 10th shot with the entry/exit/stock damage we see in the photos.
these snipers uses .300 Winchester magnum rounds that cause devastating damage on impact with some solid tissue like bone or a rifle’s stock, but they can penetrate soft tissue without causing much devastating harm as shown in this ballistic gel (https://youtu.be/u8gYe9f3AS8):
as the neck/throat area is mostly skin, muscle, wind pipe, oesophagus, vocal chords, veins, arteries and nerves, the first really hard surface a bullet entering crooks’ left facial side, would encounter could be the hard polymer of the rifle’s stock…
and while this part gets blown away, it could easily take away crooks’ puff of hair that was reported by some eye witnesses:
if we assume that crooks fired the 5 rounds from the roof along the orange line in the picture below, the shot recordings learn us the following:
there is a bit less than 1 second between the registration of the 8th shot and the 9th shot, and
the 9th shot was fired by a SWAT officer along the red line in the picture below
I do not see how this 9th shot would have damaged the stock without taking away the front part of crooks’ right chin, as the heading difference between the red and the orange lines in the picture above is about 12 degrees…
if the SWAT officer hit the stock, bullet 9 would have gone in between crooks’ chin and hit the stock
in the picture above, you can clearly see that a shot entering the bottom part of this man’s left chin would exit his right chin and encounter the rifle’s stock…
if crooks looked to his right (direction towards the witnesses under the trees, away from the AGR parking), a sniper on the southern barns behind Trump could have taken a shot with a WinMag 300.
this shot would not damage his face too much as his cheek/chin/neck/throat it is mostly softer tissue, and the first really hard matter the bullet encounters is the polymer stock…
so, if crooks turned to his right immediately after the 8th shot, bullet 9 of the SWAT officer could have taken the hit with this entry/exit/stock damage, but this does not seem to be very likely, given the fact that there is the picture with the semper fi t-shirt where crooks seems to be sitting up right, rifle to his cheek, pointing/aiming the rifle in the direction of the semper fi t-shirt man…
bottom line: it is unlikely that bullet 9 hit that stock while crooks looked to his right.
next option: crooks was still aiming in the direction of the rally area and got shot by the SWAT officer with bullet 9.
if he held the rifle somehow loosely, the 9th bullet could have damaged the stock if the bullet came from the left hand side of crooks, but that would not have been that SWAT officer:
Eyewitness said he had seen Crooks’ hair flying after the 9th shot.
6:49 saw you know his his face right he was probably pushing himself up from that prone shooting position and um as as his
6:58 silhouette if you will drop below the roof line then came the one round from the counter sniper um and
7:07 I didn’t see again his figure was below the roof line at that moment in time that second in time but I saw what what
7:14 I was describing and described in my FBI interview as as a as kind of a burst a
7:19 puff of feathers which you know in hindsight know now that it was it was his hair flying uh and so again uh from
that is true, but both Gary Melton and the man from that video I pointed at yesterday mention the same entry/exit wounds.
we do not have images of the circled part, but the injury under his right ear is extensive, and either it is an injury caused by the stock after it was shot, by the bullet that hit the stock first, or by the bullet while on its way to the stock, and for the 2 last cases: where did that bullet come from or go to? either incoming through is mouth or, e.g., from his left chin…
photos of the autopsy would be helpful, but as @cmartenson pointed out, we only have a very brief statement that crooks died following a gunshot wound…
whether an entry/exit wound would count as 1 gunshot wound or would count as 2 wounds is not clear to me, but that is something we will find out later…
also note that this damage was only mentioned when the fast buriers of information released that image (search for the press release titled “butler investigation evidence photos”) and nobody ever mentioned between July 13th and August 28th that the stock of that rifle was damaged…
if you look at the photo of the rifle that was photographed on the roof, you can see the damaged stock…
I do not have a better picture than this one, but the whitish reflection shows what can be the damaged part:
A little bit later, as you can see in a bodycam video, the hair is blown slightly towards the roofline by the wind. Therefore the puff of hair can’t be seen anymore beside the rifle after that.
given the drone footage of @rough_country_gypsy, the rifle picture released from the evidence photos and the image of crooks that was taken when he was sitting outside the building next to building 6, we can compile this (I know it is not to scale…):
and if a sniper or SWAT officer took a shot to his head, it is clear that the reported entry and exit wounds would match his left and right chin/jaw/cheek, and this would blow away the missing part of the rifle’s stock…
depending on the caliber, the hard polymer of the stock will tear away whatever it encounters, and the skin of his head and a puff of hair is easily cut away in that process…
as @sorey pointed out, the puff of hair was flying around, so, that is some evidence that has not been kept in proper custody too
it is extremely obvious to me that bullet 9 did not take him out at all…
This is even 100% for sure! Otherwise he wouldn’t have turned around (maybe even transfered into the next roof lane with this maneuver) and repositioned again between shot 9 and 10 (as seen in the Semper Fi video by Jon Malis)
Love your mock-up. Would be fantastic if you could elaborate one simulating when he’s in a lying position and holding the rifle.
