On Saturday, July 13th, Dave McCormick, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, attended a campaign rally in Pennsylvania with former President Donald Trump and sat in the front row. He witnessed firsthand a gunman’s “assassination attempt” on Trump and saw attendees behind Trump getting seriously injured.
During a CNN live broadcast, McCormick recalled that the former president had just invited him on stage when he heard “a series of gunshots – about seven or eight shots – bang, bang, bang.”
“Suddenly there was chaos. The Secret Service immediately shielded the president, covering him, and the crowd immediately dropped to the ground,” McCormick said.
“I’m not an expert in this area, but it sounded like some kind of small-caliber weapon,” McCormick said. “At first, I thought it was fireworks or something, but with the subsequent series of gunshots, I believe it was clearly a weapon, a gun.”
He turned around and saw that “someone had clearly been hit.” People around tried to administer first aid, but medical rescue personnel took a few minutes to enter the crowded area due to the density of the crowd.
McCormick said it appeared that the injured person in the crowd was a man, who was wrapped in a shirt in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Some police officers came in and carried the man out from the platform.
“You can imagine when such an event happens, it’s difficult to know what will happen next… It seems the gunshots came from in front of me – to the left of the president – which explains why people behind me were hit. But I’m not sure if there were gunshots from other directions as well; it was a scene of confusion and bewilderment at the time,” McCormick said.
McCormick stated that he and approximately 15,000 attendees at the rally had undergone screening with metal detectors before entering the event.
After the incident, Trump took to social media to announce that he had been “hit by a bullet” during the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with the bullet passing through the upper part of his right ear. The Secret Service shot and killed the gunman.
Federal authorities are investigating the shooting incident as an assassination attempt.
The Secret Service stated on social media that after “multiple gunshots,” one audience member was shot dead, and two others were seriously injured.