Rally attendee says he was 20 feet away from Trump when he was shot: "I saw blood"
BUTLER, Pa. (KDKA) -- Thousands of people experienced an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, and now many say they are being haunted by the lasting trauma.
Johnny Abel from Robinson Township says for the past 48 hours, he hasn't been able to think about anything else. He says he was only about 20 feet away from the former president when he was shot and since then has felt everything from distress to disbelief.
Twenty-six-year-old Abel had VIP access to former president Trump's rally in Butler on Saturday and what turned out to be a front row seat to the chaos.
"I saw him get hit, I saw him go down and now I am thinking, you know, the crowd is getting shot at," he said.
Those fears were only reinforced as he heard more bullets fly. He says it was like they never stopped.
"I looked up and I saw blood, you know, all over the podium," he said.
When he recorded video on his cell phone earlier, the rally, Abel's third, felt just like the ones he'd been to in the past.
"Everyone is chanting U.S.A., just very upbeat, very, you know, loving, just very enthusiastic, and then five minutes later, we're in a mass shooting," he said.
The shooting was foreshadowed in a conversation Abel says he had with a man standing right beside him as they both took in their surroundings.
"He was like, 'Do you think there's snipers on these roofs in case something happens?'"
There were snipers atop the buildings within the Secret Service perimeter, but not on the building that gave the shooter a direct line of fire to the former president.
"How does this happen? You hear all the time, 'You can't get anywhere near the president, you're never going to get a line of fire on the president, you're never going to get this or that.' Sure enough, it happened and it happened right in front of me, 20 feet away," he said.
Abel says he is only now starting to realize how much he was rattled by what he witnessed. Regardless, he says he hopes in light of this tragedy, people will put politics aside and unite.