Seconds before the gunman opened fire, he came face-to-face with a municipal police officer who wasn’t equipped to neutralize him, Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe said in an interview Sunday with The Washington Post.
Slupe said an officer from Butler Township hoisted himself just high enough to peer onto the roof of the building adjacent to the rally, and the gunman turned around and aimed at him. Because the officer was gripping the roof’s edge, Slupe said, he didn’t have a gun in his hand and dropped back down to the ground.
“He lets go because he doesn’t want to get killed,” Slupe said.
That’s when the gunman began firing onto the fairgrounds, the sheriff said.
Slupe said the municipal officer had gone to examine the roof based on a law enforcement request to try to identify a suspicious individual seen near the rally. He said he did not know if that request came from a federal, state or local agency.