US Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe said , that local police in the state of Pennsylvania should not be held accountable for the security lapses that led to the attempted assassination of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump last month, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
"In no way should the state or local law enforcement agencies that assisted us in Butler on July 13th be held responsible for the failure of the Secret Service,” said the acting director. "It was a failure of the Secret Service. The roof (from where it was fired from) should have been within our range – we should have had better surveillance of him”, he added.
In his congressional hearing earlier this week, Roe blamed the failure on local police authorities, Reuters recalls.
The first shooting of a US president or major party candidate in more than four decades is an apparent security lapse that last week led to the resignation of Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle under bipartisan pressure from Congress, Reuters said.
State officials said 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired the shots that wounded Trump in the right ear, killed one attendee at a GOP rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and wounded two others with an AR-style semi-automatic firearm. 15, before law enforcement snipers eliminated him.