Trump shooting update: no second shooter in water tower

Closer look at the evidence

News is circulating about a second shooter at the Butler rally, located in the water tower.

Credit where credit is due: the first source I was made aware of (by one of my readers, see comments of previous article), was John Cullen. He posted on Twitter early this morning, and already on the 14^th was asking about the water tower.

The claim is that there was a second shooter in the water tower, located across the parking filed next to the glass factory, on the left of the event (when looking from the audience towards the podium), which is the same side as the shooter was located.

Looking closer into this, there are 2 sets of evidence cited to support that claim: the main one is the testimony of 3 separate eyewitnesses who mention shooting from the water tower. The other is a set of video images showing what looks like impact of bullets.

Looking at the testimony of the eyewitness, there are 3 videos.

A first video shows a lady, who claims that she first thought it was the Sniper Team firing towards the tower. Only when her husband (?) said that the smoke she said she saw was actually the hydraulics from the forklift truck that was hit, that she realized that the fire came towards the stage.

Notice her hand motions: she said she saw the ‘smoke’ on her right side, meaning that she was in the audience, facing Trump’s podium. Her first gesture goes from the center to the left, describing the fire towards the tower. The second gesture, at the end, goes from the upper left towards the center, towards the stage.

A second video shows a lady talking about TWO shooters, ‘one by the fence, the other over in the water tower’.

Her gestures place the water tower at her right, the fence at her left, which matches her position as eyewitness as in the crowd, where the water tower, when looking towards the left side of the field, would be on her right side, and the fence (the fence between the field and the glass factory building) where the shooter was, on her left.

A third video shows another lady, talking about how she was in the seating area, where a gentleman to her right saw the sniper, and ‘said the sharpshooter had fired to left’, and ‘had killed the gentleman the water tower’.

Eyewitnesses are notoriously unpredictable and inaccurate. Somehow, we take what we THINK we heard or saw as what we ACTUALLY heard or saw. This is very similar to the phenomenon of apophenia. (See my substack on this topic here)

“Apophenia is the experience of seeing a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things.” We better know pareidolia, which is a subset of apophenia, insofar that it deals with visual stimuli, where apophenia can present itself in anything (numbers, events, visual stimuli, tactile stimuli, even smell and music). Pareidolia is when we see a bunny in the clouds, for example, or a face in the rear end of truck or car, with the lights as the eyes, and the license place as the mouth. Apophenia is wider. We try to make sense of what we see, and make connections.

People saw the sniper teams, rather conspicuously on the rooftops right behind Trump, to give the visual of ‘he is protected’ (when he actually was not), and when the shots rang out, their first instinct was to connect the first shot with the sniper. We know that this was not the case, right here invalidating the accuracy of their experience, as told to the interviewers. Next, people pointed at the water tower, rising above the trees on the left side of the field. What better focal point was there, but that tower? The building was low, and non-descript, and would not be what a normal person would immediately link to ‘sniper’.

So in their minds, the shots came first from the sniper team, some inventing ‘and killing a man who was on it’, even though they could not have seen or known that, but it seemed logical, so that became their story, trying to make sense of what they heard and saw (perhaps they heard, over the speakers, the shouts of the Secret Service Agents: “shooter is down!”, or heard it afterwards from other people around them, and in their story now connecting those dots.

The first lady corrected her own experience through the story of her husband, who used the logic of the sudden hydraulics leak to imply that there was a shot coming from the left, towards the stage. She gave 2 conflicting stories, one that she ‘thought’ was true, with the sniper team shooting towards the water tower (making the most sense in her mind), and the other her husbands version, connecting the shots with the hydraulic fluid spray, demanding a shot coming from the left.

The other lady mixed the idea of a shooter at the fence (meaning: the rooftop of the building right behind the fence), and the idea of a shooter at the water tower, which made more sense.
This is how someone drew that, based on the Google Earth 3D view of the area. The left arrow is coming from the ‘fence’, the other from the tower:

Did those witnesses accurately told us what they thought had happened? Yes.
Did they give an accurate report of what actually happened? No.

Already in their own stories, the discrepancies and problems become clear, showing just how difficult it is to remember things ‘as they happened’ or ‘as you thought they must have happened, so that it makes sense’. They saw the sniper teams, they saw the water tower, they heard the shots. Their mind connected the dots, in whatever way made sense to them.

Next, the video evidence of shots fired.

John Cullen presented this video.

He claims 2 people were shot, and the railing, providing 3 points, confirming the line of the shot.
Problem is , the first person he claimed was shot, and the railing, are very close together, not enough apart to confirm much just from the video (forensic study and ballistics, on the other hand...).. The second person we see go down, but was he shot?

I am not aware of the existence of more than 3 people hurt/killed. This video comes from the right-hand bleacher (looking from the audience towards the bleachers), and we know that at least 2 of the people injured sat on the left-hand bleacher. Second, looking at the position, connecting the position of both people he circled in the video, and the edge of the rail of the bleachers, properly positioned on the map, we get a line that gets nowhere near the water tower (dashed red line).

The shooter had a rather wide spray, with his first shot completely missing Trump (Green line), and his other shots way overcompensating to his right, to hit Corey Comperatore on the left hand bleacher (yellow line).

Looking at other images, the water tower was visible, but was it a good sniper perch? With a good line of sight to the podium?

Look how it barely comes over the trees, the closer you walk to it, the more the trees in front will hide more of the tower. But it was visible, and the snipers had, with their elevated position, a much better view of that tower. The left-hand Secret Service sniper team was looking in that direction, and must have had a perfect shot or view of who was or was not on that tower. I don’t think there is any actual evidence that there was someone on that tower.

Looking at the location of known hits, we get the following:

Much more in line with a location of the shooter at the roof of the building, and NOT from the water tower (the higher angle from which that shot came would make it very improbable that a shot aimed at the podium would also hit the bleacher and the fork lift truck).

If the shots really came from the water tower, this is what you would get:

Would a back-up sniper, not the 20-year old kid in the open, really be that much worse of a shot? That the first shot, aimed at Trump and hitting him, actually hit the far corner of the bleacher, instead? With such a spread? Makes no sense to me.

Another suggestion made by Mr. Cullen was this: “At 1:54:30 below, the couple by the bldg. starts running. Was that the first shot?” (Tweet here, and video in question here). Looking closely, the people ran because , looking behind them, to their left, they saw other people running, and likely pointing, and just s econd later we hear someone yelling out ‘sniper’. Only then do we hear the first pop.

There is no grassy knoll, no second shooter, as far as I can tell.

The idea was, as some called it, ‘weaponized incompetence’. TruthHammer wrote on Telegram:

“Yeah because management chose to “delegate it” so they could disclaim responsibility.

-Weaponized incompetence
-Incompetence is deniable
-Incompetence can create “gaps”

Afterwards: “Oops””

Too many questions, and too many errors of a level that a well-trained and experienced agency as the Secret Service would never make, not that many all at once, in the same spot. Apparently, there was a sniper team INSIDE the building from which the shooter took his shots! Right above their heads! He placed his ladder on the wall, yards away from the door, and nothing happened, no one noticed… Just as one other crazy element that makes NO sense. Each such instance, by itself, can be accepted as a mistake. But all of them at the same time? Getting really hard, and seems like they cleared the field. Is that certain? No, it is not. It is a suspicion I share with many others. I remain careful, though, and won’t make that as a hard claim, without hard evidence. Actual, simple incompetence is also possible, as a result of DEI over merit.

In the meantime, I keep looking for truth and proper understanding. When given information and the hint about a possible shooter in the tower, I look into that, and check it out. Either confirm it in the process, or refute it. (Or, perhaps, call it ‘plausible’). In this case, thank you for pointing out this claim, but I have to call it refuted. There is no evidence of a shooter in the Water Tower.