Experts note challenges of securing outdoor sites from assassins

INDIANAPOLIS — Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John Kennedy with a shot fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas in 1963.

Three years later, Charles Whitman shot 46 people, killing 12, with an arsenal that included a high-powered rifle from atop a 300-foot-high tower on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin.

In the summer of 2024, presidential candidate Donald Trump survived a would-be assassin’s bullet fired from a rooftop at a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign stop.

On Wednesday, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed with a single shot fired from the roof of a building on the Utah Valley University campus.

”It hasn’t changed much in 60 years.”

Steve Robertson is a retired IPD SWAT commander who participated in planning for many high-profile outdoor events during his career, including preparations for the annual Indianapolis 500 Mile Race. Robertson is familiar with the challenges a limited local police force would face in securing a large venue.

”Generally, you don’t have enough people to go secure every single possible threat site, so you work with the venue staff and ask, ‘How are the rooftops accessed? Are the hatches to the rooftops… rooftop access locked? Who has the keys or the security cards? Have any of them been lost or stolen recently?’ and you start using other resources to help secure those areas.”

Robertson said the location of Kirk’s “American Comeback Tour” stage was likely well know,n giving his shooter ample opportunity to plot the perch of the attack, leaving it up to security authorities to think like a potential assailant.

”You want to go to where that speaker is going to be positioned and start looking at the sight lines of where people can access that from rooftops or windows or concealed areas like wood lines and things like that,” said Robertson. ”You have to stand there and look around and think, ’If I was going to try to do this person some harm while they’re standing there talking, how would I do it?’ Then you kind of work your way backwards from there and go to secure those points that you believe you would do. And then through the event, you’ve got to be scanning the rooftops, the crowds, the concealed areas.”

Utah Valley University Police said it had six uniformed officers on the ground at the Kirk event with an estimated 3,000 people in attendance.

”Just the size of the area is much bigger,” said Robertson. “It requires much more planning ahead of time, including the venue staf,f all the way down to the housekeeping staff, because they’re going to be the ones to be looking in trash cans and wastebaskets all day long, because housekeeping and maintenance staffs are going to be the first ones to notice if something has been disturbed or something is different.”

Authorities have recovered the suspected murder weapon, a .30 bolt-action rifle, and released photographs of a potential suspect, a young man dressed in black who could pass for a student on the campus.

”The shot was taken from 150-200 yards away,” said Robertson, “a high-powered rifle and decent optical sight on it, it really doesn’t take a highly trained professional to make a shot like that. It is someone who is a hunter, perhaps, or spent some time on a range, would very easily be able to make a shot from that distance. So it could have been an amateur instead of a professional.”

Retired FBI Special Agent Doug Kouns, CEO of Veracity IIR, explained on the FOX59 Morning News about the challenges officers on the ground would have had protecting Kirk in an open campus setting.

“It’s hard to control the access,” he said.  “You have to have law enforcement nearby to deal with any situations, if somebody’s trying to get through with a gun. Utah, like Indiana, is an open carry state, and people have guns, and it’s just very challenging.”

Utah allows permitted gun owners to carry firearms on college campuses.

Indiana does not require gun permits; however, Indiana and Purdue universities have campus-specific bans on firearms.

”And you’ve got a handful of uniformed officers and, who knows, even fewer plainclothes officers milling about the crowds. If you see a gun, what are you gonna do? It’s legal there. You can pull them aside and question them or something, but how are you gonna deal with that?”

Robertson said officials charged with security at outdoor venue events may need to step up their game with relatively low-cost aerial surveillance.

“Drones for security purposes are an inexpensive enhancement and great for an eye on rooftops and other high ground areas.”

Kirk’s tour was scheduled to stop at Indiana University on October 21.