Trump Rally Shooting: Eyewitness Describes Event's 'Pure Pandemonium'

BUTLER, PA — Mike McMullen said the moment will be frozen forever in his mind. He was standing about 20 feet to the left of from Donald Trump when a shooter attempted to assassinate the former president at a rally on Saturday.

McMullen said he heard sounds similar to popper-type fireworks and believed that someone was playing "a sick joke." Then he saw Trump's hand rise to his bloodied ear as Secret Service agents surrounded him and pushed him to the ground.

"People started yelling 'Shots Fired!' and 'Hit the Deck!' We dropped down like we were kissing the ground," McMullen said. "It was pure pandemonium."

Trump was slightly injured in Saturday's shooting at the rally in Butler, about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh. A spectator was killed and two others were critically wounded. U.S. Secret Service agents shot and killed the shooter, identified early Sunday as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of the Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park.

McMullen, 54, is a consultant from Hampton, Pennsylvania, and a delegate to the Republican National Convention beginning Monday in Milwaukee. He shared those seconds of fear and confusion with a GOP contingent that included U.S. representatives Mike Kelly and Dan Meuser and Pennsylvania GOP U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick.

"We're wondering where the shots are coming from and if it's a lone shooter or multiple ones. We're wondering how someone could get a gun past the Secret Service," McMullen told Patch Sunday morning while en route to Milwaukee. "I'm thinking to myself, my God, am I going to get out of here alive?"

The Secret Service quickly killed Crooks, who was firing from atop a nearby building, while the Pennsylvania State Police attended to the spectators who were shot just behind McMullen.

"The state police came and got the three people who were shot and took them behind the grandstand," he said. "It was gruesome. There was blood everywhere."

As Secret Service agents whisked away Trump, McMullen said he experienced an array of emotions.

"I was pissed. I was scared. I was wondering what the hell just happened," he said. "Then I thought to myself that I'm a part of history right now. Someone just tried to assassinate the former president and maybe the next president of the United States."