Witnesses recall how Trump rally shooting unfolded: ‘We were praying for his safety’

Amid a sea of red Make America Great Again caps, Trump 2024 placards and cheers from thousands of raucous supporters, Donald Trump’s Saturday night campaign rally in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania, began indistinguishable from scores of similar events that had taken place before it.

The Republican former US president took the stage and launched quickly into a familiar riff on numbers of migrants infiltrating the southern border, pointing to a graphic on a giant display screen behind him to amplify his point.

Related: Questions mount over shooter’s ability to access roof despite security presence

The time was just before 6.15pm. And on a rooftop barely 140 yards (128 metres) away, unnoticed other than by a handful of observers who raised the alarm too late to prevent what was about to happen, a would-be assassin with a rifle was crawling into position.

There followed, in the words of one eyewitness who described the events at Butler Farm show grounds, scenes of “pure insanity”, an episode that has fueled fears of a sustained wave of political violence and unrest in the lead-up to November’s election.

A volley of gunfire, seven or eight shots that sounded to some spectators “like fireworks going off”, left Trump injured, blood visible from an apparent head wound; a man in the bleachers dead; and at least two more spectators, believed to be a man and a woman, suffering critical wounds.

As Trump clutched at his ear and ducked to the floor, a number of Secret Service agents raced to the stage to encircle and protect him. The presidential candidate lost his shoes in the confusion, and called to be reunited with them as he was bundled off to safety. But he also stuck out a raised fist and exhorted “fight! fight!’” to the crowd as press cameras furiously snapped photos.

“I was hoping it was just a prank, that it was a bad joke,” rally attendee Blake Marnell, who was sat in the front row, told the Guardian.

Trump, Marnell said, was “essentially being tackled to the ground by the Secret Service”.

In a stand behind the stage from which Trump was hauled spectators and medical personnel rushed to help those who were injured.

“I saw a man in the bleachers was hit directly in the head and died instantly,” Joseph Meyn, a surgeon from Grove City, Pennsylvania, told CNN, describing a chaotic and bloody scene.

“There was a woman who was hit in the hand and forearm.”

Meyn, who said he was attending his first Trump rally, said he helped others carry the body of the dead man out of the stand. He also went to help the shot woman, and found another doctor already attending to her.

“You don’t anticipate this stuff to go on. It’s pure insanity,” he said.

Another man, in a red Maga hat and a blood-stained shirt, told CBS News he was an emergency room doctor, and had tried in vain to administer CPR to the person who was shot in the head.

Family members on Sunday identified the victim as Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former chief of the Butler county fire department, who was at the rally with his wife and daughters.

Meanwhile, on the roof of a building overlooking the rally site, but outside a security perimeter that required attendees to pass through a metal detector, a Secret Service sniper “neutralized” the shooter. He was described by the FBI on Sunday as “the subject involved”, and named as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a registered Republican voter.

A number of witnesses listening to Trump’s speech from outside the event told reporters that they had seen Crooks maneuvering into position, and some attempted to alert authorities.

“I saw the guy move from roof to roof, told an officer [he] was on the roof,” Ben Macer, of Butler, told KDKA TV.

“When I turned around to go back to where I was, it was when the gunshots started, and then it was just chaos, and we all came running away.”

Another witness told BBC he had spotted the suspect “bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us” moments before the shooting.

“He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle,” Greg Smith told the BBC.

“We’re pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we’re like ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle’ ... and the police did not know what was going on.”

Smith said he tried for several minutes to warn authorities, but believed they might not have been able to see him because of a slope on the roof.

Armed law enforcement, Smith added, came onto the roof after the shooting and fired at Crooks, who at that stage had already been struck by a bullet from a Secret Service sharpshooter positioned on another rooftop close to the stage.

“They had their guns pointed at him, made sure he was dead. He was dead, and that was it, it was over,” he said.

Video posted by celebrity news outlet TMZ appears to show a man with a rifle, lying on his front on the roof of a building overlooking the stage, and peering through a scope. The grisly footage, taken by a member of the public, shows a chaotic scene as the shooter opens fire, and is then shot and killed himself.

Journalist Robert Evans, in a tweet, identified the building as belonging to a company called AGR International, and said he spoke to a worker there who did not recall the Secret Service or law enforcement sweeping it before the rally.

Back inside the show grounds, as spectators made their way solemnly to the exits, discarding placards and an ocean of plastic cups and empty water bottles, Marnell described to the Guardian his thoughts at the violence he had just witnessed, and his hope for Trump’s wellbeing.

“Nobody believes this is the path,” he said. “I was saying a prayer for him, as were many people. We got together. We were praying for his safety.”