Witnesses describe chaos at rally shooting: ‘Oh my God, they got Trump’

Among the sun-baked thousands gathered in a Pennsylvania field, many strained to place the sound that interrupted former president Donald Trump’s speech.

Rico Elmore, a former state candidate, and Erin Autenreith, a real estate agent, both suspected fireworks - a late Fourth of July celebration. So did Paul Kosko, a 63-year-old retiree in the eighth row.

Cindy Hildebrand, who leads a local GOP group, heard popping.

Onstage, Trump was startled by a loud whiz - and then, belatedly, a blast.

Jondavid Longo, the 33-year-old mayor of nearby Slippery Rock, Pa., and a Marine Corps veteran, said he recognized the noise immediately: a gunshot. But even he didn’t trust his ears.

“There’s no way,” he thought.

[Trump is injured but ‘fine’ after apparent assassination attempt leaves rally-goer and gunman dead]

Then more shots rang out, undeniable, in rapid succession. Trump dropped to the ground, clutching his ear as blood streamed down his face. Secret Service agents cocooned the former president.

Longo shouted for everyone nearby to drop and leaped on top of his wife.

“We’re in trouble,” Kosko thought, kneeling in the dirt.

Joseph Meyn, a 51-year-old doctor, watched a round hit a man 10 yards away. “I saw his head explode and his body slip down into the bleachers with a thud,” he said.

Elmore leaped over a barrier to help a grievously wounded man, trying to hold his head together until medics could come.

For those who had been waiting hours in the heat on Saturday in Butler, Pa., to hear Trump speak, elation turned instantly into disbelief, horror, terror and anger. They struggled in real time to comprehend what millions would soon grapple with from afar - a brazen attack on a former president and presumed GOP nominee that has upended an already deeply divided American public.

Trump was injured, though a matter of inches could have inked a different story. He said a bullet nicked the top of his ear. One rally attendee died, and two others are critically wounded, authorities said Saturday night.

The suspected gunman, named by federal authorities as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., was shot and killed by law enforcement agents. He carried out the attack while crouched on a nearby roof with an AR-15-style rifle, a U.S. official and another person familiar with the investigation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a probe that is in its early stages. His motive is not yet clear, the FBI said. Authorities say the attack was an assassination attempt on Trump.

The day started, for many of those gathered in Butler, with joy.

Kosko, a retired computer operations manager and an ardent Trump supporter, said he drove 80 minutes from his home in Greensburg, Pa. As he joined the crowds filtering into fairgrounds in this western Pennsylvania town about 35 miles north of Pittsburgh, the heat was crushing, so Kosko, an Eagle Scout, helped hand out bottles of water. Once inside, he grabbed a seat in the eighth row and chatted with an elderly woman at her first Trump rally.

“People were just ecstatic and proud,” Kosko said in a phone interview Saturday night. “Butler County, it’s the typical heartland of America.”

Security seemed predictably tight to the attendees, who waited up to two hours to get through scanners and bag searches, recalled Melissa Shaffert, a 51-year-old English teacher from Grove City.

James Sweetland, a retired emergency department physician from DuBois, Pa., said that after he spent hours in the security line getting inside, he noticed significant protection around the ground.

“It seemed secure. I think I saw military and there were SWAT teams,” Sweetland said. “On the buildings behind the stage, were two sets of sharpshooters wearing all black, with obvious high-velocity weapons. They were scoping the surrounding buildings.”

As the rally began, Longo led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, met with Trump backstage and then sat in the first row.

Elmore, an Air National Guard member and former Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania House, addressed the crowd ahead of Trump’s speech.

Trump took the stage nearly an hour late to chants of “USA!” as he marveled at the “big, big, beautiful crowd.” A few minutes into his usual stump speech, he ditched the script and asked his team to project a chart showing illegal border crossing numbers under his term and President Biden’s.

“That chart’s a couple of months old,” Trump told the crowd a little after 6 p.m., turning his head to look at the screen. “If you want to really see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened - "

He never finished the thought.

As Trump winced, grabbed at his ear and sank down, the first screams came from the crowd, and the gunshots echoed. Still, in the moment, many in the fairgrounds were confused.

“It was just totally quiet,” according to Autenreith, who said she was in the front row in front of Trump. “No one ran; it was very strange.”

Hildebrand was frozen as she watched Trump drop to the ground. “You just didn’t know what was going on; you were in a state of shock, wondering how to react to it,” she recalled.

In the eighth row, someone screamed “Get down!” as Kosko hit the ground. He and the others around him in the front rows did their best to duck and cover between rows of folding chairs.

By the time the second shot rang out, Longo said he immediately realized what was happening. But he did not know whether the shooter was near him or beyond.

“We told everybody to hit the ground,” Longo said. “My wife got on the ground. I got on top of her. My first concern was, was the shooter was inside and near us?”

Once he was convinced he and his wife were safe, Longo said, he turned his attention to Trump, whose hand he had shaken just 15 minutes earlier. With blood dripping from his right ear, the former president was surrounded by Secret Service agents.

Few had the perspective to determine how serious the injury was. “My heart stopped when he went down,” Autenreith said. “I really didn’t know if he was ever going to stand up again.”

Then, as the phalanx of Secret Service agents rose, Trump enmeshed between them and beginning to pump his fist, Kosko, an amateur photographer, rose with his camera and started to snap photos.

The close-up images in his lens finally brought home what had happened: On the former president’s face, he could see blood.

Elsewhere in the crowd, though, the severity of the situation was clear from the beginning. Meyn, a gun owner, said he could tell from the crowd’s reaction that some people thought the noise came from fireworks or some kind of prank - but he had no doubt it was gunfire.

“I heard seven rapid fire shots,” he said. “It wasn’t fully automatic fire, but it was fast. I am a huge gun aficionado, so I know what it sounds like. … I knew we were under attack.”

A second later, after the gun shots, Meyn said, he heard the counterfire from Secret Service snipers.

“Rounds were going one way and then immediately rounds were going the other way,” he said. “They were on it.”

Meyn jumped over a barrier to see whether he could help the man who had been shot in the head, but he was already dead, he said. He also saw a woman who had been wounded. He helped carry the male victim into a tent behind the bleachers.

“A woman was hysterically crying and asking if he was going to be OK,” he said. “It was absolutely surreal.”

When Sweetland heard that someone had been shot, he said, “I just went into muscle memory.” He leaped toward the victim and said he was an ER doctor.

“Unfortunately, the gentleman, he looked like he was in his 30s, had a head wound that looked fatal,” Sweetland said. “He was without pulse and respiration and was ashen in color. I saw an entrance wound, which I believe was above his right ear. I did not see an exit wound.”

Sweetland started CPR for a few minutes, but the man had no pulse. “Two police officers came and lifted him up, and he was just like a rag doll,” he said. “He’s completely limp. And his family is right there. And I turn to them, and the look on their faces was unbelievable.”

Elmore, who had medical training through the National Guard, also tried to help. Blood was smeared across his white shirt.

“I held his head to keep it intact, but it was just, it was a serious injury,” Elmore said.

He didn’t believe the man survived. He also saw a woman passed out, but she didn’t appear to be bloodied.

As the Secret Service whisked Trump off the platform to safety, Kosko and others nearby struggled to make sense of the scene.

“When I saw the blood on the side of the face, everybody in the crowd was like, ‘Oh my God, they got Trump,’” Kosko recalled. “They were starting to cry. They fell down, and they were absolutely going hysterical.”

Hildebrand said that after the shooting, “there was a lot of anger, a lot of fear, a lot of crying. There were a couple people praying.”

Reflecting on all that had happened hours later, Kosko said he was disturbed, almost in despair. What had the country come to?

“Even though I didn’t vote for Biden, I still want him to be safe, healthy and successful,” Kosko said. “I’m a Republican, but I’m an American first.”

He paused.

“This is so, so bad,” he said.

Michelle Boorstein, Isaac Arnsdorf, Jabin Botsford and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.