To read the witnesses stories, click on their images in the photo above or these images below:
In a strikingly well-documented moment in American history, the photos are everywhere of bleachers filled with people attending Donald Trump's rally in Butler County on July 13 before, during and after gunfire erupts (hear Butler, Pa., fire and emergency medical services audio about the shooting). Those there to hear the former president found themselves in the line of fire of an alleged assassination attempt. These are their stories:
In images captured by the crush of television and cellphone cameras trained on the attack at the Butler Farm Show grounds, Renee White is a distinctive figure — decked out in a Tiffany blue T-shirt reading “Mean tweets 2024,” her light blonde hair swept up under a matching “Make America Great Again” hat. She’s almost directly behind Trump.
A few days later, she recalled watching intently as he kicked off his speech, launching into grievances against the news media and Biden administration policies before jumping into the subject of immigration, a major Republican talking point heading into the November election.
Then the first shot rang out.
Two more shots followed, reverberating through the venue.
Ms. White, standing just feet from the former president during her 32nd Trump rally, watched him bring his hand to his ear, swatting like there was a bee. And then the North Carolina resident saw him drop to the stage floor. U.S. Secret Service agents piled on top, protecting Trump with their bodies.
Around her, attendees fell to the ground to avoid gunfire that continued for several seconds. Ms. White stayed up.
“They were like, ‘Get down, get down, get down,’ and I’m like ‘Why am I gonna get down?’” she said. “I remember just standing there like, ‘Man, if I was gonna go, this is how I would go.’ It was surreal.”
Seconds later she heard an agent say “shooter down” and she watched as they began moving Trump from the stage, leaving behind a shoe and a towel. And she watched him fist pump the air. He then mouthed “Fight, fight fight,” according to later reports.
Despite bullets reverberating off the grandstand, killing one man and injuring two others, she had one priority: the safety of the former president.
“I was thinking about Trump in that moment … It was almost like I wasn't there, or like I had a shield around me and I felt protected,” Ms. White said. “I don't know, it's crazy. Even later at the end when they told everybody to get back down, I ended up standing on the bleacher seats so I could see more and be higher.”
After minutes of chaos, Secret Service agents began shuffling attendees out of the venue. As people sat in their vehicles waiting to be let out, Ms. White, who went on to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, began walking up and down rows of cars screaming “Let’s fight harder.”
Three pops, then three more. The echoing noises startled Anthony Ellis, a 40-year-old Army veteran from Bridgewater who served in Iraq and who had been enjoying his first Trump rally in a seat directly behind the former president.
“First, it sounded like firecrackers. Then you see the reaction of the [former] president, then it was like shock, like what’s happening?” Mr. Ellis said. “Take cover, get down … I felt God’s presence right there, I’m not going to lie, I’m a man of faith. I had complete peace in the moment and was just really observing the crowd, trying to scan the area.”
Amid the confusion and chaos, it was difficult to take cover.
“It was really hard to move or get down because everyone was crunched down on the bleachers, trapped for a second,” he said.
As attendees scrambled, he looked up and watched the events unfold on stage. “It almost looked like slow motion to me,” he said. “I saw [Trump] grab his ear and go to the ground. All that everyone has been seeing over and over, that was in full view.”
Immediately following the shooting, Mr. Ellis found his friend Shane Chesher, 37, in the crowd.
The two began praying and others joined in, he said.
Mr. Ellis said he has been left trying to make sense of it all. “It was just a really somber thing,” he said. “I spent all day Sunday processing. I’m still processing.”
He’s also been questioning the response by the Secret Service and police.
“I’m a veteran,” he said. “I’ve been to war. We could have pulled a few dozen veterans to pull perimeter. How does that happen? … It’s really hard to believe that it was let to happen with so much security … there’s no way in hell that should have been let happen.”
Mr. Ellis also wonders how the gunman, who authorities identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to put the former president in his sights.
“You’ve got an obvious threat, you’ve got the crowd yelling ‘gun,’” he said. “The man had a gun and they didn’t take him out. Something is not right.”
It won’t keep him away from future Trump rallies. “I would go again,” he said.
Time seemed to stand still for Dana Wise as she draped her body over two children, shielding them from the bullets she heard ricocheting off the metal bleachers that they sat on directly behind the former president.
Ms. Wise’s own teenage daughters were supposed to be in the seats that she flung herself onto when gunfire erupted, but they had been unable to attend that day.
In lieu of her daughters, Ms. Wise, 38, and her husband, Shane Chesher, had invited their friend Sonya Hantz and her two daughters to join them in the bleacher section — where the pair of mothers would find themselves moving quickly to cover and comfort the girls once they realized the pops echoing through the rally were gunshots.
“I looked at the children that were near me and they looked so terrified,” Ms. Wise said. “I couldn’t stop. My mind immediately went to them and I dropped to keep them protected. My friend was laying on top of her daughter so I leaned down and made sure they were covered and calm … If something were to happen, I didn’t want that to be their last moment.”
Ms. Hantz, 38, of Natrona Heights, said her youngest daughter, who is 10, was terrified as bullets plinked off the bleachers — tears in her eyes as she clutched a crocheted octopus she made in hopes of giving it to Trump.
“As a mom, I had her in my arms and my hand on my other daughter’s leg, just telling her it's OK,” Ms. Hantz said. “It’s almost like, as a mom, you have that panic and fear but you're almost not allowed to show it.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Wise watched her phone light up with calls from family members who saw her dive down on live television. The sceen eventually went black from a dead battery.
Ms. Wise, Mr. Chesher, and Ms. Hantz told the Post-Gazette that, in the moments of the shooting, an eerily calm feeling permeated through the bleacher section that had shifted from being a backdrop for Trump to finding itself directly in the line of fire.
“It was almost like, if you jumped, you would stay stuck in the air because everything was in slow motion, like time had stopped,” Ms. Wise said. “It was a very strange feeling.”
Mr. Chesher, who was seated to the immediate right of his wife and who can be seen directly behind Trump in footage of the incident, said the speed of events left him barely time to react.
“Most people beside me ducked,” he said. “I saw the people above me kind of kept standing. I knelt, but I didn't ever fully duck. I just didn't understand what was really going on. It all happened so fast.”
Ms. Hantz peeked her head up and saw the disheveled former president, surrounded by Secret Service. She was struck with terror.
“He just looked really unstable on his feet, wobbly, weak at the knees,” she said. “It was a very scary experience. And I just remember the fear that I had and I’m just thinking, please tell me that I’m not going to have to watch this man die right in front of me.”
Moments later, Trump raised his fist and began chanting “fight” before being whisked off stage.
Mr. Chesher, from his seat in the center of the bleacher crowd, broke into the Lord’s Prayer, quickly joined by dozens of other attendees in what he described as a surreal moment. “When we said, ‘deliver us from evil,’ and we were just delivered from evil, it had a new meaning to us,” he said.
Ms. Hantz was also moved. “It was a beautiful moment amidst the chaos, for the whole stands to come together.”
Days later, Ms. Wise remains shaken. “I still feel like I'm stuck in a fight or flight mode,” she said. “It's been kind of weird.”
The shooting has not changed Ms. Hantz’s children’s minds about attending another Trump rally in the future, she said. “I asked them if they would want to go back to another one and they said, yeah.”
Barbara Williams needed a few seconds to reflect. So the 58-year-old Baltimore resident still sat in the bleachers after the shots had rung out, the former president moved to safety and others were leaving, urged on by the Secret Service.
“I kind of just sat there for a bit in a state of disbelief,” Ms. Williams said. “And I’ll tell you something else. Once they got him out, I had it in my mind, I said, ‘I bet he's gonna come back out here and say, you missed and put up his middle finger.’”
Instead, Trump was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital to be examined.
Ms. Williams, who had arrived in Butler Thursday night to volunteer at the rally, was still in awe of the former president’s response immediately following the shooting, offering up a fist bump to show he was OK.
Decked out in a red hat and holding a campaign sign, she had been seated near the base of the stage, Secret Service agents stationed in front of her. When the shooting started, she, too, thought it was firecrackers. Then police officers started screaming. She eventually heard chatter amongst Secret Service agents saying the shooter was down.
“Once you realize that somebody attempted to assassinate him, then your first fear is, ‘Oh my God, did they do it? Did they kill him?’ So when he got up, everybody started cheering,” Ms. Williams said. “That was just a wonderful moment when he got up and shook his fist.”
She watched as Trump was guided off the stage, blood running from his ear and him searching frantically for his shoes. In a video captured by Ms. Williams, crowds can be heard chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” as he limps down the stage stairs surrounded by agents. Calls of “We love you, Trump” and “We love you, Donald” are heard in the background.
She doesn’t remember being scared for her own safety. That would come later. Afterwards, she thought to herself, “God, if they hadn't gotten [the shooter], who knows how many of us might have been hit?”
John W. Myers Jr. was instantly annoyed when the first shot rang out. The 66-year-old Karns City resident thought “some asshole got a firecracker here.”
Then Trump grabbed his ear, dropping to the ground.
To Mr. Myers’ right, Secret Service agents jumped on top of the former president. From his left, in a set of bleachers where Mr. Myers and his wife, Lynne Myers, had considered sitting before choosing the center section, screams for help echoed across the crowd. Corey D. Comperatore, 50, of Sarver, had been fatally shot.
“It was very, very quick and very surreal,” Mr. Myers said.
In the moment, he crouched down in the bleachers alongside his wife. He tried to determine where the shooter was located, initially thinking the person was in the stands.
“In the commotion, never would have thought there was a shooter with a long rifle outside of the perimeter making a shot like that,” Mr. Myers said.
People began standing back up. Trump had been ushered into a black Chevy Suburban. Secret Service agents began urging attendees from the stands.
“No one hurried,” Ms. Myers, 65, said. “Everyone just walked out … and the farther away we got, there were more people saying, ‘Don't stop, just go.’ But there was no chaos, there was no anger.” Ms. Myers wasn’t scared “until several days later, when I realized that this is what happened. This is what I witnessed.”
As realization settled in, she also began questioning how it could have happened. Attendees went through metal detectors. They were not permitted to bring in large bags. And Secret Service agents were stationed on two buildings located directly behind the stage.
But to the left, a building outside the Farm Show grounds was unsecured, allowing 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, to climb to the roof.
“It just struck me as we're wide out in the open, he's going to be on that stage, wide out in the open,” Ms. Myers said. “They should have had those buildings covered. And I actually wasn't even afraid then, but I was just like, ‘That's just weird that there are no guys anywhere on the buildings.’”
Ms. Myers hadn’t been to a Trump rally before. The couple tried to attend the 2020 rally at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport but were unable to get tickets.
“It kind of hits you all over,” she said. “Like, OK, [we] were really right in the midst of it.”
Mr. Myers, a gun owner, called the shooting “a black mark on the United States of America, it’s a black mark on Butler County.” “It’s all you think about,” he said. “It’s all you dream about. It’s life changing.”
The Rev. John Pistorius admits he is unnerved.
“We were right in the line of fire,” the 65-year-old Chicora resident said.
Rev. Pistorius, who pastors at Christ’s Family Church in Chicora, was sitting in the center set of bleachers to the far right of Trump when the popping noises started.
As the scene unfolded, he watched Trump put a hand to his ear. When that hand came back down, there was blood.
“There was this complete panic on the lower level below us,” he said. “People were screaming and ducking. Quite honestly, it did not sink in. Even though we realized this was a serious situation, we were just in awe, we were awestruck. … We did not comprehend the gravity of the situation.”
In the aftermath, Rev. Pistorius realized he wasn’t scared, but rather concerned.
“I'm troubled by the social media, the flurry of things that I'm seeing and reading, people expressing hatred for this man, wishing that the assassination had been successful,” Rev. Pistorius, who was attending his first Trump rally, said. “That disturbs me. It disturbs me that we have such a divide in this country, and that it's a moral divide.”
Rev. Pistorius said people need to be more willing to listen to different opinions and more open minded. He hosted a prayer vigil at his church to help people process their grief following the shooting that killed one man and injured two others.
“I saw this massive number of people that were all hoping to hear something that got cut short,” he said. “It’s just very disturbing.”
Joleen Monteleone watched Secret Service agents whisk a disheveled Trump from the stage. Then the commotion started behind her. “Help! We need help!” someone in the rows of bleachers behind her was screaming.
“Are they shot?” asked Ms. Monteleone, 57, of Butler, who was sitting in a set of bleachers to the right of Trump.
“Yes!”
Ms. Monteleone started waving her arms in the air and calling for a medic. Corey D. Comperatore, 50, of Sarver had been fatally shot. Those in the nearby seats tried unsuccessfully to save him.
She is now grappling with how close she was to the bullets.
“It was very scary,” Ms. Monteleone said. “The first thing when I heard the shots, when I realized, oh … this, this is a gunshot, the first thing that you think of is your family, my children, my husband. I better get down.”
In the days that followed, Ms. Monteleone realized that as the scene unfolded in front of her, she didn’t hear the screams or other noises that rang out during the commotion.
“I only heard certain things, which I've never really been in a position like that before,” she said. “I guess that's probably normal. Your brain kind of goes into survival mode, I guess, to keep yourself calm and collected.”
When she got home that night, her husband enveloped her in a hug.
“I kept saying, ‘I'm fine, I'm OK.’”
When the gunfire stopped, Chris Takach and David Sullivan didn’t hesitate. The two Steubenville, Ohio, firefighters began moving metal barriers to allow medics to bring injured people from the stands and running into the bleachers to help.
“I just think it's just automatic, you know? I mean, it's the first responder mentality.” Mr. Sullivan, 57, said.
The two had decided to attend the rally to show Trump that he has support from area firefighters. They wore their Steubenville Fire Department helmets and held signs reading “Firefighters for Trump.”
Even before the assassination attempt, they’d been putting their skills into action. They spent hours at the sweltering fairgrounds that day, spending part of the time assisting people struggling with heat exhaustion, taking their vitals and fanning attendees to help them cool down. They secured spots in the grass near the bleachers, to the right of the stage.
Just minutes into Trump’s speech, the shots rang out.
“We didn't realize they were shots, or couldn't believe,” Mr. Takach, 56, said. “In my mind, I'm like, ‘Surely, this is not happening.’”
From their positions, bullets could be heard ricocheting off the grandstand. At one point, a bullet hit a speaker, sending itl to the ground, they said.
When the gunfire stopped and they realized there might be victims, they started moving the barricades.
“We were just lifting eight-foot sections, three-foot high metal barriers, out of the way,” Mr. Takach said. “We were somewhat close to the handicap section … and then next thing you know they come down quickly carrying the victims out.”
They made their way into the stands to see if anybody else needed assistance. People were still crouched in the footwells and sitting on benches, until the Secret Service started ushering people out.
“There wasn't enough time to be scared,” Mr. Takach said. “We got down, took cover, and then got back up, and I felt like it was over.
“I had confidence the whole day with the Secret Service … and I felt secure that they had mitigated the situation. And then that's when we got back up. We were probably down for less than a minute.”
Mr. Sullivan, who had considered taking his 15-year-old daughter to the rally but ultimately decided against it, said the reality is now setting in.
“It's a sad, senseless tragedy,” he said, “really, for all Americans, Republican [or] Democrat.”
Corey Check was brimming with excitement as he snapped a photo of himself giving Donald Trump a thumbs up as the former president entered his rally in Butler on Saturday.
Just minutes later, jubilation turned to terror as Mr. Check, who was seated in the bleacher section directly to the right of Trump, found himself ducking for cover.
“When I got down the first time, I thought, this is bad, this is a shooting,” he said. “Once we heard ‘get down,’ that just clicked instantly in my mind that it was gunshots and it was terrible … we’re just laying on the ground and I thought, ‘maybe I’m going to get shot today, maybe I’m going to die.’”
The 22-year-old committeeman for the Butler County Republican Committee described chaos after the gunfire stopped.
“Some [people] were trying to get out,” he said. “Some people were trying to push the guardrail right next to me. Some people were trying to push it down and unlock it. The Secret Service told some people to get down, and some didn’t. Then he (the agent) pulled out his gun and everyone got down again.”
What Mr. Check saw while ducking for cover has stayed with him.
“I saw [the Secret Service agent’s] pistol in that shadow through the red, white, and blue banner, because he was crouching down,” he said. “And that image is just burned into my head like I cannot unsee it.”
Chet Jack, a 65-year-old member of the Pennsylvania Republican Committee who was seated in the same section as Mr. Check, off to the former president’s right, said he tried to determine where the shots were coming from as soon as they rang out.
“They seemed to be coming from above my head and to the right hand side, so I turned to see if I could determine where the shooter was, and I couldn’t see him.”
Amid the bedlam, he watched people rush to the wounded, with most of the attention focused on Corey D. Comperatore. Mr. Comperatore was killed in the shooting.
“I heard people shouting for medics,” he said. “I saw people — Rico [Elmore] had gone there — … and they were attempting to help him. Then I saw folks moving the crowd over so they could get in there to treat and remove victims at that point … It was very chaotic.”
Despite the tragedy, he felt positive about the way others in the crowd lept into action. “Evil did show his face, but remarkably so much good showed its face. There’s people who went to the aid of the victims selflessly. They didn’t know whether the shooter was dead, but they went and they helped.”
Stories: Jacob Geanous, Megan Tomasic
Design: Ed Yozwick | Development: Laura Malt Schneiderman
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