Secret Service to amp up drone use after Trump assassination bid

WASHINGTON: The US Secret Service plans to increase its use of surveillance drones following the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, the agency´s acting director said on Friday.

“We did not have a drone on site” at the July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman opened fire on the Republican White House candidate, said Ronald Rowe, who took over after the previous director resigned.

Trump was slightly wounded in the right ear, two rally attendees were seriously injured and a 50-year-old Pennsylvania firefighter was killed when the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots from a nearby rooftop.

Crooks, 20, was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper on a building behind the stage where Trump had begun speaking.

“We should have had better coverage on that roofline” from where Crooks opened fire, Rowe told a press conference.

“We thought we might have had it covered with the human eye,” he said. “But clearly we are going to change our approach now and we are going to leverage technology and put those unmanned aerial systems up.”