Witnesses say a man with a rifle ‘crawled like a bear’ on a roof near Trump’s rally before shots rang out… while officers say he fired from ‘hundreds of yards away’

Witness accounts are providing new details about the terrifying moments when shots were fired at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding the former president. One man said he saw the suspected gunman crawl into position.

According to the Secret Service, the shot came from outside the meeting’s security perimeter, where police use security scans and magnetometers to detect potential threats.

A witness outside the event said attendees saw a man with a gun climb to the top of a building outside the Trump rally, and that warnings from the crowd had no effect.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still talking, why didn’t they take him off the stage?’ … and the next thing you know, five shots go off,” the man, identified as Greg, told the BBC.

He said those present could see what was happening and could have alerted police within minutes, but they may not have been able to see the threat.

“We saw the guy crawling like a bear on the roof of the building next to us, about 50 feet away from us,” he said. “So we’re standing there pointing at the guy crawling on the roof.”

Witnesses have described the terrifying moments surrounding the shooting that wounded former President Donald Trump. One man said members of the crowd identified a man with a gun outside the perimeter

“He had a gun, we could clearly see a gun, absolutely.

“We were pointing at him, the police were running around down there on the ground, and we were like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a gun’… and the police didn’t know what was going on.”

“We thought, hey, up there on the roof. We can see him from here. We can see him. You know, he’s crawling.”

The man asked, “Why is Trump still speaking? Why didn’t they take him off the stage?”

Another witness, identified as Joseph, said NBC that he was standing in the stands at the far left of the stage when Trump spoke.

“I heard multiple gunshots. The man next to me had a gunshot wound to his head – died instantly, fell to the bottom of the stands. Another woman looked like she was shot in the forearm or hand,” he said.

“It looked to me like the shots were coming from behind the stands. It looked to me like the man was hit in the back of his head,” he said. He said it looked like the woman was shot in the forearm and hand.”

“I helped carry the man out of the stands to a tent that was behind the stands,” he said. “He’s deceased,” he added. He was a few feet away.

Another witness, Trump superfan Blake Marnell, told Dailymail.com he was just 10 yards away from the former president when he heard what he thought were fireworks.

“I instinctively looked to my left,” he said. “The next time I turned to look at the president, he was being tackled to the ground by Secret Service agents.”

Anna West, a 40-year-old artist from Pittsburgh who attended her first Trump rally with a friend, told DailyMail.com that the first shot “sounded like a tire blowing.”

West was at the front of the crowd, but on the opposite side of where the shooter’s bullets were coming from. He saw a sniper on a nearby roof going into action.

“He grabbed a pair of binoculars and then I saw them grab a .308 rifle and I turned around and looked at my friend and I said, ‘Get down,'” she said. “Just as that happened, [Trump] grabbed his ear and said ‘ow’ and they were already shooting.’

“There was someone who was killed behind him and there was someone else who was seriously injured, we saw them fly out. They were in the stands behind him, I believe,” she continued.

West lay on the ground and could not find any recognizable features of the protest participants who had been shot.

“The Secret Service opened the gates and they just started yelling at people to run. And thankfully, nobody trampled anybody. I know they said there was a riot. That’s not true,” she said. “Everybody left, they evacuated the whole place. People were honking in the parking lot and stuff, but nobody drove away.”

“There was no panic. It was actually handled very well,” noted the first rally-goer.

Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said his lead detective told him the shooter was in an adjacent building, telling CNN:‘That required a rifle’ and ‘It was a distance of several hundred meters.’

During the rally, “a suspected gunman fired multiple shots at the stage from an elevated position outside the rally venue. U.S. Secret Service personnel neutralized the gunman, who has since died,” according to a statement from Anthony Guglielmi, director of communications for the Secret Service.

“The U.S. Secret Service responded quickly with protective measures and the former president is safe and being evaluated,” he said.

“I heard about four shots and I saw the crowd go down and then Trump ducked real quick. Then the Secret Service all jumped up and protected him as fast as they could. We’re talking about within a second they were all protecting him,” Ron Moose, a Trump supporter who was in the crowd, told Reuters.

A witness told the BBC he saw a man with a gun crawling like a bear

He said he saw a man running and was chased by police. He also heard more shots and said government snipers were positioned on the roof of a warehouse behind the stage.

Trump himself released a statement on Truth Social describing himself as having been struck by a bullet. However, police have not yet confirmed the cause of his injury.

“I was hit by a bullet that went through the upper part of my right ear. I knew right away something was wrong because I heard a whooshing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet tear through my skin. There was a lot of blood loss, so that’s when I realized what was happening,” Trump said.

The Department of Homeland Security issued its own statement that did not elaborate on how the incident occurred. “Maintaining the security of presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of our Department’s top priorities.”