Witnesses describe lack of security in lot that backed up to Trump rally

BUTLER, Pa. — Two women who watched former President Donald Trump’s rally Saturday from a neighboring property described what they called lax safety measures beyond the event’s security perimeter.

Valerie Fennell and Deb Kuminkoski had tickets to go to the rally, but, because of the heat and the large crowd, they decided to hang back and watch from Fennell’s backyard, which backs up to the area where the rally was held.

Fennell’s backyard is in a grassy area between where the Trump crowd gathered and the AGR factory where the shooter was perched on the roof of one of the buildings, about 150 yards away.

The shooter’s bullets soared right over their heads on their way toward Trump and his supporters as they watched the event, they said.

Fennell was pressed up against the fence, watching Trump make his opening remarks, when she noticed some “commotion” behind her, people running in different directions, she said.

Someone nearby told her a man with a backpack was on the roof of one of the nearby buildings. It was during that commotion, Fennell said, that attendees began alerting police that someone was up on the roof with a backpack.

Moments later, the shooter opened fire.

Fennell didn’t see the shooter, but she said that her son did and that he saw the rifle.

She said he also saw law enforcement snipers “get into position” and aim in their general direction as they stood in line with where the shooter was.

Fennell said her son turned to see what they were aiming at. 

“He looked up and he saw the shooter,” Kuminkoski said, “a person with long hair all stretched out, ready to shoot. He saw this before any of the gunfire took place.”

Fennell and Kuminkoski said they didn’t see any security where they were positioned, right outside the event. “That I was aware of … nothing was secured on this side,” Fennell said. 

When she thinks about it now, Fennell said, she’s shocked.

Because she lives so close to where the event was held, Fennell said, she was expecting authorities to contact her, to even knock on her door, in the lead-up to the rally. She thought they might set up a security station on her property because it’s so close by.

That call never came, and Saturday, she said, she was looking around the area to see where security had set up but didn’t see anybody. 

Instead, the entire area just outside the event’s perimeter was open and people were walking around freely within 150 yards of where Trump was speaking with no security visible, they said.

Fennell said that there “might have been” two or three police cars, as well as local police, parked nearby but that she didn’t see them stopping anybody who walked nearby.

Asked whether Saturday’s incident was a failure of security, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, told reporters Saturday night that an investigation is underway to determine if there were any failures.

He said the Secret Service would have been in charge of securing the scene, including outside of the security perimeter where the shooter was located, noting that it’s the Secret Service who conducts the site survey and determines where security locations should be throughout the venue.

Lt. Col. George Bivens with the Pennsylvania State Police said Saturday night that there were 30 to 40 members of their force on the ground at the event, with additional resources in the area, but that it’s “incredibly difficult to have a venue open to the public and to secure that against any possible threat, against a very determined attacker.”

Fennell and Kuminkoski shared photos of a woman with a Trump flag riding a horse around in the area and a gap between two side-by-side fences — separating the lot where the shooter was from the rally — secured only with zip ties.

Fennell said that she is feeling “every emotion there could be” since Saturday’s shooting, where one spectator was killed and two were critically injured, and that she, along with a lot of others, are “traumatized” by what happened in the otherwise peaceful area.

“Chances are I’m going to sell my house, and I’ve only been here a year and a half,” Fennell said. “I enjoy sitting in my backyard and seeing the fields and the grass, but I’m going to sit out there and forever know what happened.”

Tom Llamas and Ignacio Torres reported from Butler and Rebecca Cohen from New York City.