BUTLER, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania, days before accepting the Republican nomination for a third time. A flurry of gunfire sparked panic and a bloodied Trump, who said he had been shot in the ear, was surrounded by the Secret Service and ran to his truck while brandishing his fist in defiance.
Trump’s crusader said the presumptive Republican nominee was “doing well” after the shooting, which he said pierced the top of his right ear.
“I immediately knew something was wrong, I heard a whistle, gunshots and I immediately felt the bullet tear my skin. There were a lot of hemorrhages,” he wrote on his social network.
The FBI identified the shooter early Sunday as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The firm said the investigation remains active and ongoing.
Secret Service agents shot and killed Crooks, who had attacked from a high position outside the demonstration site at a farmers show in Butler, Pennsylvania, the firm said.
One player was killed and two spectators were seriously injured, the government said. They were all known as men.
It was the most serious assassination attempt committed against a president or presidential candidate since the assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981. It brought new attention to considerations of political violence in the United States. deeply polarized, less than four months before the presidential elections. And it may simply replace the tenor and security posture of the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee.
Organizers said the conference will go ahead as planned.
Trump flew to New Jersey after visiting a local Pennsylvania hospital and landed shortly after at Newark Liberty International Airport. A video released through an aide showed the former president disembarking from his personal plane flanked by U. S. Secret Service agents and heavily armed members of the agency’s Counter Strike Team, an unusually visual display of strength through his team of coverage.
President Joe Biden, who opposes Trump, reported the incident and spoke with Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said.
“There is no position in the United States for this violence,” the president said in a public speech. “It’s crazy. It’s crazy. “
Biden planned to return to Washington early, cutting short a weekend at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
WATCH: Witness says he saw shooter at Trump rally: ‘When I turned my back to him, the shooting started’
Many Republicans blamed Biden and his allies for the violence, arguing that sustained attacks on Trump, seen as a risk to democracy, created a poisonous environment. In particular, they highlighted a comment Biden made to donors on July 8, saying “it’s time to target Trump. “
Officials said members of the United States Secret Service’s counterattack team killed the gunman. The heavily armed tactical team moves with the president and the main party applicants and is intended to deal with any active risks while other agents protect and evacuate the user. The coverage center.
Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a third user familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
An AP investigation of more than a dozen videos and images from the scene of Trump’s rally, as well as satellite photographs of the scene, shows that the shooter managed to get eerily close to the scene where the former president spoke.
A video posted to social media and geotagged via AP shows the frame of a user dressed in gray camouflage, motionless on the roof of an AGR International Inc. building, a manufacturing facility just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds. where the Trump rally took place. . .
The rooftop where the user was located was less than 150 meters from where Trump was speaking, a distance at which a clever sniper could hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 yards is a distance that U. S. Army recruits will have to reach a human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle. The AR-15, like the shooter at Trump’s rally, is the semi-automatic civilian edition of the military M-16.
Asked at the news conference if authorities didn’t know the shooter on the roof until he started shooting, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh ticket office, replied that “that’s our assessment right now. “
“It’s surprising” that the gunman was able to open fire on the level before the Secret Service killed him, he added.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose branch oversees the Secret Service, said officials were involved in the Biden and Trump campaigns and were “taking every imaginable step to ensure their safety and security. “
WATCH: Witness says he saw shooter at Trump rally: ‘When I turned my back on him, the shooting started’
A collection disrupted by gunfire
Trump appeared on a board with border crossing numbers when the shooting began after 6:10 p. m.
When the first pop sounded, Trump said, “Oh,” put his hand to his right ear and looked at it, before temporarily crouching on the floor next to his lectern. People in the stands also ducked as screams echoed through the crowd.
Someone near the microphone can be heard saying, “Drop, duck, duck, duck!” as officials rushed to the level. They piled on the former president from his body, as is his educational protocol, while other agents took positions on the level to search for the threat.
Screams could be heard from the crowd of several thousand people. One woman screamed louder than the others. Afterward, voices were heard saying “the shooter has fallen” several times, before someone asked “are we fit to move?” ” and “Are we clear?” Then someone ordered: “Let’s go. “
Trump may be heard in the video saying at least twice, “Let me take my shoes, let me take my shoes,” with a voice saying, “They gave it to me, sir. “
Trump stood up moments later and you can tell that he puts his right hand to his face, which was stained with blood. He then raised his fist in the air and gave the impression of saying the word “Fight” twice in front of his crowd of supporters, prompting loud applause and then chants of “United States. “UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES. “
The crowd applauded as he stood up and clenched his fist.
His caravan left the scene a few moments later. The video shows Trump turning toward the crowd and raising his fist just before being loaded into a vehicle.
WATCH: Biden says ‘everyone will have to condemn’ attack at Trump rally
Witnesses heard gunshots and fled for cover.
“Everyone was put on their knees or in a prone position, because we all knew, we all learned that it shoots,” said Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate for the US Senate in Pennsylvania, who was sitting on the level to Trump’s right.
Seeing Trump raise his fist, McCormick said, he looked over his shoulder and saw that someone had been hit while sitting in the stage stands.
Eventually, first responders pulled the injured user out of a giant crowd so he could get medical attention, McCormick said.
Journalists covering the demonstration heard five or six shots and many ducked to hide under tables. After the first two or three explosions, other people in the crowd seemed surprised, but not scared. An AP reporter at the scene reported that the noise first sounded like firecrackers or perhaps a car overturning.
When it became clear that the situation had failed and that Trump would not speak again, attendees began to leave the room. A man in an electric wheelchair was stranded in the box when his wheelchair’s battery died. Others tried to help him move.
Police temporarily asked others to leave the scene and Secret Service agents told reporters to “leave now. “It is a real crime scene.
Two firefighters from Steubenville, Ohio, who were at the demonstration, told the AP they helped other people who appeared to be injured and heard bullets hit speakers.
“The bullets hit the stands, one hit the speaker tower and then chaos broke out. We fell to the ground and then the police converged on the stands,” Takach said.
“The first thing I heard was a cracking sound,” Dave Sullivan said.
Sullivan saw one of the speakers get hit and bullets flying and “we fell to the ground. “
He said that once the Secret Service and other administrations converged on Trump, he and Takach helped two other people who had been shot on the stand and cleared a path to pull them aside.
“It’s just an unhappy day for America,” said Sullivan, who recalled that liquid was sprayed from a mechanical line above the level before a speaker tower began to fall.
“Then we heard another shot that you might hear, you knew there was something, it was bullets. They were not firecrackers,” he said.
Political violence shakes United States again
The dangers of crusading have taken on new urgency after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in California in 1968, and back in 1972, when Arthur Bremer shot and seriously wounded George Wallace, who was running as an independent on an arguable crusading platform. . This led to increased coverage of the candidates, even as threats persisted, particularly endorsements of Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Barack Obama in 2008.
Presidents, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, have even higher degrees of security. Trump is a rarity as a former president and current candidate.
WATCH: Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore: ‘This looks like a real assassination attempt’
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Sen. J. D. Vance, the three men on Trump’s short list for vice president, temporarily sent statements expressing fear for the former president, and Rubio shared a symbol taken as Trump was escorted. level with his fist in the air and a touch of blood on his face accompanied by the words “God, President Trump”.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a statement in X that he had been notified of the situation and that Pennsylvania State Police were present at the scene of the demonstration.
“Violence against a political party or a political leader is certainly unacceptable. This has no standing in Pennsylvania or the United States,” she said.