Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump escaped an assassination attempt after being shot in the right ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
The incident caused panic as Trump emerged with blood stains on his face, pumped his fist in the air, and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Shots rang out shortly after Trump had started his speech. He touched his right ear with his right hand, then looked at it before dropping to his knees behind the podium as Secret Service agents covered him.
The assassin was neutralised. One Republican supporter was killed, and two other spectators were injured, the Secret Service said in a statement.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform following the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 50 km north of Pittsburgh. “Much bleeding took place.”
Trump emerged about a minute later, his red “Make America Great Again” hat knocked off, and could be heard saying, “Wait, wait,” before agents ushered him into a vehicle.
The assassin’s motive was not immediately clear, but frontline Republicans and Democrats quickly condemned the violence.
The shooting occurred less than four months before the November 5 election, when Trump contests for a second time against President Joe Biden.
In his response, Biden said in a statement: “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”
Ron Moose, a Trump supporter who was in the crowd, described the chaos: “I heard about four shots and I saw the crowd go down and then Trump ducked real quick. Then the Secret Service all jumped and protected him as soon as they could. Within a second, they were all protecting him.”
The BBC interviewed a man who described himself as an eyewitness, saying he saw a man armed with a rifle crawling up a roof near the event. The person, who the BBC did not identify, said he and the people he was with started pointing at the man, trying to alert security.