Shooting at Trump rally in Butler County leaves 2 dead, including suspect
CONNOQUENESSING TWP — Less than six minutes into his speech Saturday, July 13, at the Butler Farm Show grounds, former President Donald Trump and three spectators were shot before the shooter was shot by the Secret Service.
Trump survived, but one spectator and the shooter were killed, District Attorney Rich Goldinger said soon after the chaos unfolded. State police later confirmed two other spectators were wounded.
The bleachers behind Trump and the seats in front him were filled with some of the thousands of people who came to see and listen to Trump a week before he will presumably be nominated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
Slippery Rock Mayor Jondavid Longo said he and his wife met with Trump before the speech and were sitting in the front row to the right of Trump when the shooting began. Longo had led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance earlier in the afternoon. The shooting took place about 6:10 p.m.
“An individual who was about 15 to 20 feet behind us lost his life because of this maniac and the violence he wanted to do here against us and President Trump,” Longo said.
He said he heard the first shot, but wasn’t immediately sure if it was gunfire. When more shots were fired, he said he pushed his wife to the ground and covered her to protect her out of fear that shooter might be near them.
As Secret Service agents jump on Trump, Longo said he yelled for the audience members around him to keep their heads down.
“Unfortunately the person who was killed was right behind us. He was seated 15 to 20 feet behind us in the bleachers to the left of the stage,” Longo said.
He said he feels awful for the man and his family.
Goldinger didn’t attend the rally, but was informed of the shooting.
“It’s terrible. This is part of a microcosm right now that someone would want to kill a presidential candidate. It’s sad, resorting to eliminate a candidate. This country needs to come together,” Goldinger said.
As authorities urged visitors to leave the rally and evacuate, James Sweetland, 70, a retired physician from DuBois, could be seen walking away in a white shirt stained with blood. He had helped a man who was shot in the bleachers. The gunshot wound to his head was “grave,” Sweetland said, and he recalled seeing the man in a pool of blood.
“I heard some shots and I heard somebody say, ‘A guy’s down — he’s been shot,’” he said. “People were huddled.”
“He was down in a pool of blood,” he said. “His body was twisted and wet in that row where the blood is at.”
“He was down and not breathing,” Sweetland said. “He did not have a pulse. I started CPR. I breathed for him and did compressions.”
Sweetland said he saw state police carry him “like a rag doll.”
“I can’t even believe it,” said Sweetland’s wife, Lois.
“Isn’t this unbelievable?” she said. “In the United States of America?”
“I’m fine — I’m angry,” Lois Sweetland said. “Because something happened and this guy got a gun in this area. And I’m just sorry that it happened with all these people.”
The Secret Service said agents killed the suspected shooter — who it said attacked from an elevated position outside the rally venue — and that Trump was safe.
The attack was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It drew new attention to concerns about political violence in a deeply polarized U.S. less than four months before the presidential election. And it could alter the tenor and security posture at the Republican National Convention, which will begin Monday in Milwaukee.
Trump's campaign said the convention would proceed as planned.
President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, was briefed on the incident and spoke to Trump several hours after the shooting, the White House said.
“There’s no place in America for this type of violence,” the president said in public remarks. “It’s sick. It’s sick.”
Biden planned to return to Washington early, cutting short a weekend at his beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Many Republicans quickly blamed the violence on Biden and his allies, arguing that sustained attacks on Trump as a threat to democracy have created a toxic environment. They pointed in particular to a comment Biden made to donors on July 8, saying “it’s time to put Trump in the bull's-eye.”
There was no immediate information on the shooter or their motivations.
In the coming days, much of the focus will shift to the shooter and security lapses. The shooter was not an attendee at the rally and was killed by U.S. Secret Service agents, according to two officials who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
The officials said the shooter was engaged by members of the U.S. Secret Service counterassault team. The heavily armed tactical team travels everywhere with the president and major party nominees and is meant to confront any active threats while other agents focus on safeguarding and evacuating the person at the center of protection.
Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene, according to a third person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.
An AP analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a person wearing gray camouflage motionless on the roof of a building at AGR International Inc., a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.
The roof where the person laid was less than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees the Secret Service, said officials were engaged with the Biden and Trump campaigns and “taking every possible measure to ensure their safety and security.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
