Eyewitnesses: Fear, confusion, security woes at Trump rally

His late-afternoon appearance on July 13 started the same way many political rallies held by potential presidential candidate Donald Trump usually do.

On a hot summer evening at agricultural fairgrounds in the town of Butler, Pennsylvania, population around 13,000, Trump had just started to speak about the dangers of migration.

 

Then shots rang out over the rally.

"I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin," Trump wrote on his social media feed on Truth Social after being released from the hospital. His upper right ear was hit. "Much bleeding took place," the former president noted.

Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, was sitting on stage with Trump. "Everybody went to their knees or their prone position … everyone [was] becoming aware of the fact this was gunfire," he told the Associated Press.

McCormick also said he saw a bystander who had been sitting on rows of seating behind the podium who had been hit. Authorities say one man was killed and two other people were injured by a gunman. The gunman was killed by security officers. 

"He [Trump] was speaking about immigration," audience member Blake Marnell, 59, told The Guardian. "I was watching him and then I heard some noises."  Marnell said he only realized this was gunfire when he saw the Secret Service agents react.

Another man in the crowd, Shane Chesher, 37, told Reuters that he also thought it was fireworks at first. "It sounded like pop, pop, pop," Chesher said. "I thought it was a prank, like fireworks. Then I watched it get real very quickly when President Trump went down and Secret Service came in and more shots went off … everyone started panicking. It was chaos."

Chesher began to pray and says that others around him joined in, which "gave people a lot of peace."

Questions raised about security

Several bystanders appeared to have seen the gunman before security forces did.

Greg Smith, who was just outside the rally grounds listening to Trump speak, told a correspondent for the BBC he'd seen a man "bear crawling" in military style up on a nearby factory roof. He was clearly holding a weapon, Smith noted.

Smith said he pointed this out to the police, but they seemed to ignore his warnings. Smith suggested that the slope of the roof prevented them from seeing the shooter.

"I'm thinking to myself, 'Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?'" Smith said. "The next thing you know, five shots ring out."

Another man, Ben Maser, 41, was also just outside the rally when he noticed the man on the roof.

"I saw the guy on the roof. I told the officer that he was up there. He went about looking for him," Maser told Reuters.

The New York Times reported some people in the crowd then noticed law enforcement snipers on top of a barn becoming active shortly before the shooting started. Rally attendee Craig Cyrus, 54, told the US newspaper that he saw the snipers using their binoculars. "Then they got their guns," he said.

Audience member shot in head

When the shooting started, there was some confusion, Sid Miller, commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture, who was at the rally, told the New York Times. But once people realized what was happening, they dropped to the ground.

Miller was only about 10 meters away from the podium and recounted how, as Trump was being protected by Secret Service officers, people in the crowd ducked for cover. Law enforcement officers shouted at people to get down. Some people were looking around, trying to work out where the shots were coming from, Miller noted.

Reporters covering the event said they took cover under tables.

"Bullets rattled around the grandstand, one hit the speaker tower and then chaos broke," Dave Sullivan, a firefighter who had been listening to Trump's speech, told the Associated Press. "After we heard the shots got fired, then the hydraulic line [connecting the speakers] was spraying all around, you could see the hydraulic fluid coming out of it. And then the speaker tower started to fall down."

When Trump was lifted up again by Secret Service agents and appeared to be fine, videos on social media show the crowd burst into wild cheering. "We love you, Trump," one man calls out.  Others started chanting: "USA, USA."

Afterwards, some people were crying and Miller saw one of the people who was shot bleeding profusely. One of the victims sitting in the same area who was shot was apparently able to walk away with minimal assistance, witnesses said. 

Another was not. A doctor at the rally, James Sweetman, went to help one of the victims, who had been shot in the head and appeared to be in his mid-30s. Sweetman told CBS he performed first aid with the help of others in the crowd but the man had no pulse, the emergency room physician told the New York Times. The victim was flown away by helicopter. 

Security officers in the crowd were "on edge," rallygoer Miller added.

Soon after Trump was escorted away, police and Secret Service officers began to usher the crowd out too. They told journalists to leave too, saying this was now "a crime scene." Some in the crowd stopped at the media enclosure and yelled at reporters, telling them the shooting was "all your fault."

An hour after the shooting, the Pennsylvania field, now littered with rubbish, was declared a crime scene, AP journalists wrote.

cs/ktz (AP, Reuters, media reports)