BUTLER, Pa. — A man who was at former President Donald Trump’s rally here on Saturday described the moment he saw another attendee drop to the ground, dead, after being shot in the head.
NBC News spoke with the witness, identified only by his first name, Joseph, who appeared to speak about the moment a single spectator was killed at the event when shots rang out just moments after Trump began speaking.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.” Blood was seen on his ear and the right side of his face, and he went to the ground after the shots were fired.
Follow live coverage of the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally
Trump is safe and is expected to survive, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
A spectator was killed and two were critically injured in the shooting, the Secret Service said in a statement. The suspect was killed.
Joseph said he was sitting in a set of bleachers at the far left of the podium when he heard “several gunshots” ring out. He said he saw a man a couple of yards away fall to the bottom of the bleachers after having been shot in the head.
He said it was “rather chaotic at that point” as he was trying to figure out where the gunshots were coming from. He said that it seemed the shots were coming from behind the bleachers and that the man was hit from behind, in the back of the head.
Joseph said the man appeared to have been killed instantly.
State police and a SWAT team then began evacuating everyone in the bleachers. Joseph said that he helped officials carry the dead man off of the bleachers to a tent nearby and that officials put a towel over his head before they carried him off.
Joseph said he did not know the man, who has not been publicly identified.
He said the man was facing Trump at the very far left part of the bleachers.
“It seemed like the man was in the way of the shots between whoever was shooting the gun and the president,” Joseph said. “The man who was hit, it seemed like he was in the crossfire.”
Another woman nearby appeared to have been shot in the forearm or in the hand, he said.
Joseph said that he counted seven shots and that both the deceased man and the injured woman were hit within those first seven shots.
He said that at first he was in shock and that he knew the pops were gunshots but that he didn’t know where they were coming from, adding that they were “very loud” and “very close.”
Joseph said that after the man was shot, he was able to piece together that it looked like the shots were coming from behind the bleachers.
The Secret Service said multiple shots were fired “toward the stage from an elevated position outside of the rally venue.”
He said that others thought it was a “prank” at first and that it sounded like fireworks but that people began taking things seriously when the SWAT team began running on the scene.
Joseph, an OB-GYN, said that he told police he could help render assistance but that police said they did not need him, so he helped with the man who was killed.
He said that the man’s family was in the bleachers with him and that they were in shock and didn’t know what was going on. About five family members were there, two of whom were “hysterical,” Joseph said. The family was taken to the tent with their deceased relative.
Joseph also described Trump’s being hit, saying it seemed he had been “nicked in the ear” while his head was “off to the side.” It was “a second or two” before the Secret Service jumped on top of Trump.
“It’s something you don’t expect,” Joseph said of the incident, adding that it came “out of the blue.” Saturday’s was the first Trump rally he has been able to attend.
“The way politics goes in this country, it just seems like it’s very polarized,” he said. “Everyone’s just very angry. I’m honestly shocked this didn’t happen earlier.”
He said he noted earlier to a friend who accompanied him to the rally that the back of the venue, the area behind the bleachers, appeared very “open.”
“I got this sense … if something was bad was going to happen, this was the perfect venue,” Joseph said. “Surprisingly enough, it happened.”
Dasha Burns reported from Butler and Rebecca Cohen from New York City.
