FFormer President Donald Trump was pushed off the stage by Secret Service agents after a shooting Saturday at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump was speaking at the rally around 6:15 p.m. when a series of loud pops sounded. The former president grabbed his right ear before falling to the ground. Agents rushed to the stage, covering Trump, before leading him to a waiting vehicle.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he was “shot by a bullet that pierced the top of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately something was wrong as I heard a buzzing sound, gunshots, and immediately felt the bullet tear through my skin,” Trump wrote. “There was a lot of bleeding, so I realized what was happening.”
Photos taken at the scene showed the former president with a wound to his right ear and blood on his face. He raised his fist and shouted “Fight!” to supporters as he was led away, prompting applause from the crowd.
The suspected gunman fired several shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside the rally site, according to Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman. One participant died and two others were seriously injured, Guglielmi said in a statement. The alleged shooter was “neutralized” by a Secret Service agent and later died, Guglielmi said.
See more information: Politicians condemn shooting at Trump rally.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said nothing was yet known about the shooter. A video shared with TIME showed officers removing a body from the scene.
James Sweetland, a retired emergency room doctor, told TIME at the scene that he performed CPR on a man who had been shot in the head and had blood coming out of his mouth. “He wasn’t breathing,” said Sweetland, 70, whose shirt was stained with blood. “I got other people to help me put him on one of the benches and we performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him. I couldn’t feel the pulse.” It was unclear whether the man survived.
Scott Sosso, 47, was sitting in the stands with his son Luka, 18, when the shots rang out. “You hear pop, pop, pop,” Sosso said. “Ten seconds later, you hear ‘Someone got shot!’ The next thing you know, everyone has entered our section.
Darrin Mohney, 36, said the shooting sounded like fireworks. “Everyone kind of froze, and the next thing you know, after the second round and the third pitch, everyone started hitting the deck,” he said.
Speaking to news cameras Saturday night from Rehoboth, Delaware, President Biden said he was “thoroughly briefed” by Secret Service and Homeland Security officials. “I tried to contact Donald. He was with his doctors. I intend to talk to him soon.”
“Look, there’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” Biden said. “It’s sick. It’s sick. It’s one of the reasons we have to unite the country. We can’t allow this to happen. We can’t be like this. We can’t tolerate this.”
When a reporter asked if he thought it was an assassination attempt, Biden said, “I have an opinion, but I don’t have any facts.”
The Biden campaign said it was “pausing all external communications and working to remove our television ads as quickly as possible,” according to a campaign official.
Former President George W. Bush expressed gratitude that Trump was safe “after the cowardly attack on his life.”
Many present at the scene were filled with disbelief and outrage at the massive security breach that allowed an armed individual to shoot a former president.
“I’m shocked that someone was able to shoot, but not that they tried to do it,” says Danny Altmire, 56.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said he contacted the Secret Service for a briefing and summoned the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to appear at a hearing. In a separate statement, he condemned what he called an “assassination attempt.”
Republican Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, a finalist to be Trump’s running mate, suggested in an X post that Biden’s campaign rhetoric led to the incident.
“Today is not just an isolated incident,” Vance he wrote. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
Donald Trump Jr. told TIME in a text message that his father was “in a great mood. He will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him.”
With reporting by Brian Bennett and Vera Bergengruen/Washington
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
