Witness accounts are providing new details about the terrifying moments when someone fired shots at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding the former president; one man said he could see the suspected shooter crawling to his position.
The Secret Service said the shot came from outside the rally’s security perimeter, where law enforcement uses security screening and magnetometers to detect potential threats.
A witness outside the event said attendees could see a man climbing a building with a rifle outside Trump’s rally, and that warnings from the crowd had no effect.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still talking? Why hasn’t he been taken off the stage?’… The next thing I knew, five shots rang out,” said the man, identified as Greg. BBC.
He said attendees could see what was happening and alerted law enforcement over a period of minutes, but they may not have been able to see the threat.
“We saw the guy climbing on the roof of the building next to us, like a bear, 15 metres away from us,” he said. “We just stood there, pointing at the guy climbing on the roof.”
Witnesses have described the terrifying moments surrounding the shooting that injured former President Donald Trump. One man said members of the crowd identified a man with a gun outside the perimeter.
“He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle, absolutely.
“We were aiming at him, the police were down there running around on the ground, and we were like, ‘Hey, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’… and the police didn’t know what was going on.”
“We were like, hey, right there on the roof. We can see him from here. We see him. You know, he’s crawling.”
The man asked: “Why is Trump still talking? Why hasn’t he been removed from the stage?”
Another witness, identified as Joseph, said NBC who was standing in the stands at the far left of the podium as Trump spoke.
“I heard several shots. The man next to me received a gunshot wound to the head; he died instantly and fell to the bottom of the steps. Another woman appeared to have been shot in the forearm or hand,” she said.
“It seemed to me that the shots were coming from behind the bleachers. It seemed to me that the man was hit in the head from behind,” he said. He said it appeared that the woman was shot in the forearm and hand.
“I helped get the man out of the stands and into a tent behind the stands,” he said. “He’s dead,” he added. He had been standing just a few feet away.
Another witness, Trump fan Blake Marnell, told Dailymail.com that he was just 10 metres away from the former president when he heard what he thought were firecrackers.
“I instinctively looked to the left,” he said. “The next time I turned to look at the president, Secret Service agents were tackling him to the ground.”
Butler County Prosecutor Richard Goldinger said his lead detective told him the shooter was in an adjacent building, telling CNN:“A rifle would have been necessary” and “It was several hundred yards.”
During the rally, “a suspected shooter fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside the rally site. U.S. Secret Service personnel neutralized the shooter, who is now deceased,” according to a statement from Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service.
“The U.S. Secret Service responded quickly with protective measures and the former president is safe and being evaluated,” he said.
“I heard about four shots and I saw the crowd fall to the ground and then Trump ducked down really quickly as well. Then the entire Secret Service jumped in and protected him as quickly as they could. We’re talking about within a second everyone was protecting him,” Ron Moose, a Trump supporter who was in the crowd, told Reuters.
A witness told the BBC he saw a man “creeping like a bear” with a rifle.
He said he saw a man running and being chased by police. He also heard more gunshots and said there were government snipers stationed on the roof of a warehouse behind the stage.
Trump himself issued a statement on Truth Social where he described himself as having been hit by a bullet, although police have yet to confirm the source of his injury.
“I was shot with a bullet that went through the top of my right ear. I knew right away something was wrong because I heard a whistling sound, gunshots, and I immediately felt the bullet go through my skin. There was a lot of bleeding, so I knew what was happening,” Trump said.
The Department of Homeland Security issued its own statement that did not mention how the incident occurred. “Maintaining the security of presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of our Department’s highest priorities.”