An eyewitness claimed he saw the suspected shooter -- who fired at former US president Donald Trump while he was addressing a campaign rally in Pennsylvania -- sneaking up to the roof of a building near the event grounds on Saturday. Gary O'Donoghue told BBC that the people he was with started pointing at the man -- armed with a rifle-- trying to alert security.
O'Donoghue, who described himself as an eyewitness, said he saw a man crawl onto a roof with a rifle, approximately "five to seven minutes" into Trump's remarks.
"We noticed a guy crawling... up the roof of the building beside us, 50 ft away from us...We're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof," he said, describing how he and his friends tried to alert law enforcement to the man's presence.
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Trump had just started his speech when gunshots erupted and he and other rally attendees hit the deck.
Two other locals of Butler in Pennsylvania, Warren and Debbie, who were at the rally when the shooting took place, said they heard at least four gunshots. They told BBC they got on the ground as the Secret Service came through the crowd, shouting for the attendees to get down.
"We couldn't believe it was happening," Warren said.
Debbie said a little girl beside them was crying that she didn't want to die and saying "how is this happening to us?"
"That broke my heart...I'm always afraid he's going to be assassinated," she added.
Ron Moose, another Trump supporter who was in the crowd, said he saw a man running and being chased by officers in military uniforms.
Describing the chaos, he told the news agency Reuters, "I heard about four shots and I saw the crowd go down and then Trump ducked also real quick. Then the Secret Service all jumped and protected him as soon as they could. We are talking within a second they were all protecting him."
Moose said later he heard additional shots, but was unsure who fired them, adding that by then snipers had set up on the roof of a warehouse behind the stage.
As per a report by CBS, the attacker was armed with a rifle and stood outside a cordoned-off area at the rally, about 200 yards (182m) from Trump. Quoting law enforcement officials, the report said that it is suspected that the shooter stood on an "elevated structure".
The shooter was killed by a member of the US Secret Service counter-assault team, CBS reported.
Meanwhile, the former US president received a minor injury during the association attempt. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, in a statement, said Trump was in 'great spirits'.
“I just spoke to my father on the phone and he is in great spirits. He will never stop fighting to save America, no matter what the radical left throws at him," he said.