McCormick Recounts Trump Assassination Attempt from Front Row: 7-8 Shots Rang Out

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - JUNE 22: Dave McCormick, Republican U.S. Senate candidate fro
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Nick Gilbertson

Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick shared his first-hand account from the front row of the rally where an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was carried out Saturday.

McCormick spoke with ABC News immediately after the attempt to take the life of the leading U.S presidential candidate and the 45th president of the United States. Mccormick, a veteran U.S. army paratrooper who was awarded the Bronze Star, offered his perspective from the front row of the rally.

Trump was about to invite McCormick, who he endorses, on stage before apparent gunshots rang out.

“I was in the front row, and President Trump had just announced me and said he was going to have me come up on the stage and said, ‘Well, wait a minute,’ and then there were a number of shots, I think, probably seven or eight shots,” McCormick recounted. He emphasized that it was unclear whether shots were coming from one or two locations.

“And immediately, there was a swarm of Secret Service officers that… knocked down President Trump and got on top of them,” he added. “And then he stood back up, and you sort of saw this fist come out, sort of defiant, that looked like he was okay, but like, I – you couldn’t tell for sure.”

McCormick noted it appeared as though “there was some blood, but it wasn’t obvious.”

The crowd scurried to the ground for safety – per the Republican senate candidate who has Trump’s endorsement – before he noted someone was wounded in the bleachers behind him.

He told ABC News:

And then the entire crowd went to the ground because we weren’t sure whether the shots were done, and, then unfortunately, over my shoulder, someone had clearly been hit. I was on… the ground, and up in the bleachers, probably three or four bleachers behind me, it looked like there was a man who was severely injured, there was a lot of blood. And the people around him were trying to administer first aid, and then the police, some police officers came in and carried him out and presumably took him to get first aid. That’s really all I could see. I don’t know if there were other people injured. And I don’t know if there was anybody apprehended because as you might imagine, once that happened the crowd was … it was very chaotic, and it was very hard to know what was going on.

It is entirely unclear if the individual wounded that McCormick referred to was a bystander or perpetrator. McCormick also recounted his feelings during the moment, emphasizing it was “very obvious that the president was under assault and very much at risk.”

He added:

Once it started to sink in, you know, you’re thinking, ‘Are there still shooters out there, you know, are they, you know, are they going to target other people.’ And, you know, it’s just, like, these situations, I was in the military previously, you know, you realize over time that the facts start to come together, so you got to be careful not to draw too many conclusions early on, but I think what we all felt was a sense of ‘Oh my word, you know, everybody’s in danger,’ because there’s clearly a shooter, at least one shooter in the crowd, and maybe more and, you know, really, I think, scary for everybody who was there and shocking.

Reports indicate at least one shooter is dead.

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