BUTLER, Pa.—An assailant fired several shots at former President Donald Trump during a rally on July 13, piercing the former president’s right ear, killing a man in the stands, and critically injuring two others.
The former president was airlifted to a nearby hospital and was in good health. His jet departed Pennsylvania minutes before midnight, according to a flight tracking website. A video later posted by one of his press aides shows the former president walking down the stairs to the tarmac in New Jersey.
Secret Service personnel killed the attacker seconds after he fired a rifle from a nearby rooftop. The FBI has since identified the suspect as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania—about one hour’s drive from the rally grounds in Butler to the north.
The assassination attempt, the first such attack against a president or a presidential candidate since 1981, occurred days prior to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the GOP plans to formally nominate former President Trump to challenge President Joe Biden in this year’s presidential election.
It was also the latest in an unprecedented, polarized campaign season that featured four indictments and a conviction for former President Trump, the conviction of the sitting president’s son, Hunter Biden, and most recently, a campaign by some in the Democrat party to push President Biden out as leader of the Democrats in the 2024 race.
Not long after the chaos erupted in Butler, warm wishes poured forth from friends and opponents at home and abroad.
Former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama said they were relieved that former President Trump was safe, and condemned the attack. President Biden issued a written statement and briefly addressed the nation from Delaware. The president later spoke to his predecessor, according to the White House.
“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick, it’s sick,” President Biden said at the emergency briefing room in Rehoboth, Delaware.
“It’s one of the reasons we have to unite this country,” he said. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.”
The leaders of the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Israel among many others, also wrote messages of support.
Mr. Trudeau said he was “sickened” by the shooting.
“It cannot be overstated—political violence is never acceptable,” he wrote. “My thoughts are with former President Trump, those at the event, and all Americans.”
The former president’s supporters and Republicans in Congress began to question the security arrangements for the event as more information surfaced about the assassin’s location. The shooter was able to crawl on top of a roof in plain sight of several eyewitnesses who said they that had alerted law enforcement personnel minutes before the shots were fired.
Greg Smith was one of several people listening to the rally from outside the Butler Farm Show grounds. From there, Mr. Smith of Butler said he saw the assailant crawling up the roof.
“I had a direct line of sight, directly to the backside of that roof, and I saw a guy crawling up the roof, bear-crawling up the roof, with a rifle,” Mr. Smith told The Epoch Times. He and his party saw Secret Service agents and tried to get their attention.
“We could see them looking at us. I stood there for about one or two minutes, pointing at the guy on the roof,” Mr. Smith said.
“And the police were running around, down and around the bottom of the building. And we were like, ‘Hey, man, there was a guy on the roof with a rifle.’ And the police were just running around, [I] don’t know what they were doing. And the next thing you know, the guy crawled up to the peak and took about four shots. I don’t know how many shots it was exactly. That’s what we saw.”
Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, told reporters that the bureau’s current assessment was that security personnel were unaware of the man on the roof until he began firing his rifle.
“It is surprising” that the assailant was able to fire as many rounds as he did, Mr. Rojek said.
‘Suspicious Activity’
During a press conference that started shortly before midnight, officials confirmed that law enforcement officers were responding to several reports of suspicious activity in the minutes leading up to the shooting. They referred questions about whether and how the roof was secured to the Secret Service, which did not send a representative to answer questions from the press.The FBI will lead the investigation into the attempted assassination, while state agencies will have domain over the killing of the bystander and the critical wounding of two others.
In the hours following the shooting, social media was flooded with images from the attack, which was being live streamed. In one photo, the former president, bloodied and surrounded by Secret Service agents, raises a defiant fist toward the audience, taking the time to let them know he was ok as Secret Service agents worked to move the former president off the stage. Another photographer captured the long blur of a brass-colored bullet streaking through the air by the former president’s head.
“God protected President Trump,” Sen. Marco Rubio, who is one of the top contenders for the vice presidential nomination, wrote on X.
The Trump Campaign and the Republican National Committee confirmed in a statement that former President Donald Trump will appear in person at the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in two days in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15.
Witnesses
Trump supporter Erin Autenreith, 66, of Pittsburgh, was seated in the front row, directly in front of former President Trump when the shots rang out.
She said she saw “a little bit of blood” on his left cheek, she told The Epoch Times. Then, when he turned his face the other way, she saw blood running down the right side. She said she felt relieved when he pumped his fist.
Tom Chyb, a Butler resident, told The Epoch Times that he initially thought there were fireworks going off before he realized that shots had been fired.
“It was shocking; it was ugly. Just too ugly to be true,” he told The Epoch Times, as men in tactical gear ran past.
Logan Reynolds, 27, of Erie, Pennsylvania, was at the very back of the crowd.
When the shots rang out, there was an initial moment of uncertainty. But then, he said, a sea of people turned away from the stage and faced him.
“I saw over 1,000 faces of terror in one instant,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Reynolds said the shooting made him sad, then angry, but said he felt better after hearing news reports that former President Trump had given a fist pump after getting up from behind the podium. Mr. Reynolds said he gathered a few people together on a bridge to wave Trump flags at passing motorists to bolster morale.
The shooting represented someone “trying to take away the right for us to vote for who we want,” he told The Epoch Times. “That person was undermining our Republic and our democracy.”
Mr. Reynolds said both he and his younger brother “had a funny feeling” about the area later identified as the spot where the gunman had positioned himself, as there were too few security guards there.
“Why wasn’t that building completely locked down? And why wasn’t a sniper on every roof?” Mr. Reynolds asked.
State officials did not immediately name the victims of the attack to afford relatives time to contact their extended families.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a White House physician during the Trump administration, said a bullet grazed his nephew’s neck at the Trump rally.
His nephew was in an area designated for friends and family to the right of former President Donald Trump, Mr. Jackson said on Fox’s Hannity show Saturday night.
Mr. Jackson said that someone four or five rows behind his nephew was “critically injured.”
The shooting happened about 90 seconds after the crowd chanted, “Thank you, Trump!” in response to Trump saying he could have been living a life of leisure on an island somewhere but felt obligated to run for president and help the nation.
In a message to his supporters posted on Truth Social, the former president said he was shot with a bullet that “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
