Eyewitnesses describe scene at Trump rally shooting: 'It's pure insanity'

Butler, Pennsylvania -

Eyewitnesses who spoke to CNN on Saturday described an awful scene following a shooting at former U.S. president Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which one person was killed and two others injured in what’s being investigated as a possible assassination attempt.

A man who spoke before Trump at Saturday’s rally told CNN that he jumped over a barricade to comfort an individual who was bleeding after being shot.

Rico Elmore spoke to CNN as he walked away from the rally stage. His white shirt was stained with blood from the victim, whom he said he did not know.

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Elmore described jumping over the barrier and putting his hand on the head of the attendee who was shot.

“All we know is shots were fired, and then I jumped over the barrier and put my hand on the guy’s head that was profusely bleeding,” Elmore told CNN.

He said he didn’t know the attendee and he was “just a stranger.”

Elmore was visibly shaken up but said he was not harmed. He said he only saw one attendee hit and did not see what happened to Trump.

The former president said on Truth Social on Saturday that he was shot in the ear but his campaign said he was otherwise fine. The Secret Service said hours after the shooting that one rally attendee is dead and two others are critically injured. The gunman shot from outside the rally and was “neutralized” by the Secret Service, spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

A law enforcement source and a police officer at the scene told CNN the shooter was positioned on a building rooftop just outside the rally venue. The source said the building was the same one where CNN had seen a heavy police presence following the shooting. The building would have been to Trump’s right as he spoke.

‘It was all of a sudden just chaos’

Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick was sitting in the front row of the event. McCormick told CNN he saw the “immediate attack on the president” and a person behind him who appeared to be severely injured.

McCormick told CNN that Trump had just announced him and invited him up to the stage, when about a minute later he heard “a series of shots – about seven or eight shots – just ‘pop, pop, pop.’”

“It was all of a sudden just chaos. The Secret Service immediately covered the president, jumped on top of him, and the crowd immediately went to the ground,” McCormick said.

McCormick said he looked over his shoulder behind him and “it was clear that somebody had been hit.” People around the man were trying to administer first aid, he said, as it took several minutes for medical assistance to get into the crowd because it was so dense.

“But you can imagine with that kind of incident happening, it’s very hard to know what’s coming. … It seemed like the shots were coming from my front – so the president’s left – which makes sense why the person behind me was hit. But I’m not sure if there were also shots coming from the other direction, so as you might imagine it was chaotic and confusing in the moment,” McCormick said.

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McCormick said he and all of the roughly 15,000 attendees in the crowd went through metal detector screening before they entered the rally.

Republican Rep. Dan Meuser told CNN he was sitting in the front row with McCormick and fellow Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly, with the spectator who was fatally shot “no more than 20 feet behind” them.

“Everybody started, certainly, screaming, asking for a medic, and honestly, it was a bloody scene,” Meuser said.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is helped off the stage at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP / Gene J. Puskar)

“It started out like a regular rally. President Trump came in, took pictures and spent a little bit of time. He came out, he was speaking no longer than six or seven minutes, and next thing you know, there was, there was rapid fire. It was pretty obvious, after the second or third gunshot, what was happening,” the congressman said.

“We weren’t sure if there were others. I mean, when you hear gunfire like that, it sounds like, you don’t know where it’s coming from,” Meuser added. “A lot of people were very panicked, but fortunately, they settled down after a little while, particularly when President Trump, honestly, stood up and gave a thumbs-up. That kind of calmed the crowd a little bit.”

Speaking with CNN, the congressman also made a plea for civility going forward, saying, “We’ve really got to remove the hostility. I think everybody agrees – we need to cool things down.”

‘It’s pure insanity’

Joseph Meyn told CNN that a man near him was shot.

“Very shocking … a lot of people just thought it was fireworks going off, I knew immediately it was gunfire,” Meyn said.

Meyn, a surgeon from Grove City, Pennsylvania, told CNN he helped carry the man out of the bleachers.

“I was at the far right of the podium, where the people sit in the front. I was filming him (Trump) speaking on my phone. Just as I was panning back, I heard seven gunshots in rapid successions, in under two or three seconds,” Meyn said.

Meyn said he looked back in the direction the gunshots had come from. “I saw a man in the bleachers was hit directly in the head and died instantly. … There was a woman who was hit in the hand and forearm, a noncritical wound.”

He said he went over to see if he could render any aid, but another doctor was already helping the woman who’d been shot.

“I helped carry the body of the man out of the stands. They took the body to the tent behind the bleachers,” Meyn added.

CNN reached Meyn as he was waiting to give a witness statement to the FBI. “They want the data off my phone,” he said. “This is the first Trump rally I’ve been to. … You don’t anticipate this stuff to go on, it’s pure insanity.”