Fear and shock rattled rallygoers at former President Donald Trump’s campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when a suspected gunman opened fire and grazed the top Republican’s ear with a bullet. Now spectators who witnessed the incident are doubling down on their support for the former president.
“We fight harder than we ever did before,” Renee White, a Trump supporter, told Fox News’ Lawrence Jones.
“I’m all in for Trump. I have been ever since he walked down that escalator, and the fact that they tried to do this, somebody maliciously tried to do this… it really hurts that somebody would do that to anybody, much less somebody who’s fighting for us.”
She ended the remark tearfully.
Rallygoers Renee White and Ron Jurysta were interviewed by Lawrence Jones on Sunday. (Fox & Friends Weekend)
Jones traveled to the site of the incident early Sunday, where he spoke with White and Ron Jurysta, who both attended the rally and witnessed what happened. During “Fox & Friends Weekend,” the rallygoers recalled feelings of shock and fear.
“Fear [went through my mind],” Jurysta told Jones. “My first thought was my family and my wife and my son and daughter. We all got down in between the bleachers. The shots rang out over our head. Seeing the shots, hitting the stage, hitting the president, people behind us screaming because the person that was hit was behind us – I think more than one person, possibly.”
SHOOTING AT TRUMP RALLY BEING INVESTIGATED AS ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage by U.S. Secret Service agents after being grazed by a bullet during a rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“[It’s] absolutely surreal,” White said when asked how she felt at the moment.
“Like something crazy. It just was nuts, how it all happened. I think because I had been 14 hours with no sleep. Maybe [I felt] a little bit of shock that maybe it hasn’t all hit me, but even when it was going down, I was just, like, looking around, taking everything in,” she added.
“I had four young girls next to me. They dropped. They were all crying and shaking. And I had people standing next to me. I had this guy next to me that stood, and we were talking during the whole thing. The next thing I knew, I looked at him, and he was down underneath the bleachers, and I’m sitting there, I think maybe shock.”
Authorities identified the suspected gunman as 20-year-old suspect Pennsylvania native Thomas Matthew Crooks. The incident is still under investigation.