Two eyewitnesses who captured phone vision of a gunman firing at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday (local time), said they attempted to warn authorities of the shooter’s position but things “got very hectic, very fast”.
Mike and Amber DiFrischia told CNN’s Erin Burnett on OutFront on Sunday that they first realised something had gone wrong at the event when there was running in the crowd and they were able to spot a man on the roof of a building near them.
“And then shortly after that, a guy behind me said that he had seen him. He had a gun,” Mike DiFrischia said of the shooter.
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“And then when he said that, I moved over a couple of feet, and I was able to get a perfect shot, I was able to see him perfectly,” he continued.
Then he began to record.
“My wife ran up to law enforcement — was trying to tell them, you know, where he was, but they couldn’t seem to see him because they weren’t in the right spot to see him on the roof. They were too close to the building. So it just got very hectic, very fast,” DiFrischia said.
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Law enforcement officials asked the DiFrischias, “Where’s he at?” and they pointed toward the shooter’s location, they told Burnett.
Shortly after attempting to alert authorities to the shooter’s position, Amber DiFrischia said people began to run.
And then they began to hear gunshots.
READ MORE: Trump calls for unity, Melania labels shooter ‘a monster’
“It was just chaotic. It was so fast. First thing is, find coverage. And it was just the scariest thing, you know, there’s not a lot of places you can hide there,” she said, adding they tried “to hide behind two trees just to make sure we weren’t going to be, you know, hit by the bullets.”
Mike DiFrischia described how he watched one officer try to climb the building but not make it to the shooter’s location, explaining, “I don’t know if the guy startled him, or what exactly happened.”
Though the DiFrischias could not immediately identify that officer, CNN has reported a local officer saw the gunman and was hoisted by another to get up to the ledge.
The shooter turned around, saw the officer peering over and pointed his gun at him.
The officer let go of the ledge to “take cover” and save his own life.
The gunman then started firing from the rooftop. Trump, who says he was shot in the ear, was rushed offstage with blood on his face.
READ MORE: What assassination attempt means for Trump’s campaign
As CNN has reported, widespread concerns and questions have surfaced about how a sniper was able to obtain rooftop access roughly 150 metres from the former president’s position at the podium at an outdoor rally.
Sources have described the shooting as coming from the “three o’clock” position of Trump’s podium location, with shots coming from his right side.
Seconds after gunfire rang out, Secret Service counter-assault snipers began shooting the suspect, who was found deceased on top of the roof.
Mike DiFrischia, who said his recording also captured the gunman lifeless atop the building, recounted how he first thought the shooter was facing the crowd and had told people around him to get down.
“When I first seen him looking our way, I thought that he was actually, you know, maybe gonna start shooting this way. I did not realise he had already been shot,” he said.
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