Butler, United States: Donald Trump was hit in the ear in an assassination attempt by a gunman at a campaign rally Saturday, in a chaotic and shocking incident set to supercharge political tensions ahead of the polarising US presidential election.
The 78-year-old former president was rushed off stage with blood streaked across his face after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, while the shooter and a bystander were killed and two spectators critically injured.
The Republican candidate raised a defiant fist to the crowd as he was bundled away to safety, and said afterward: “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
President Joe Biden, who is set to face Trump in November’s deeply polarized election, said the incident was “sick” and added that there was “no place in America for this kind of violence.”
Biden later spoke to Trump, the White House said.
The FBI has identified the gunman, who was shot dead, as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, according to a statement cited by US media early Sunday. His motive remains unknown.
The US Secret Service said earlier that the shooter “fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside the rally” before being “neutralized” by agents.
A video published by US outlet TMZ shows the alleged assailant lying on his belly on a sloping rooftop and aiming a rifle. A quick succession of gunshots is heard followed by screams from off-camera Trump supporters attending the rally.
“The guy has longer brown hair… and as you can see, he’s carefully trying pinpoint a target from afar before pulling the trigger,” TMZ reported. Crooks lived about 40 miles (65 kilometers) from the rally venue.
The FBI confirmed in a press conference that the shooting was being treated as “an assassination attempt against our former president, Donald Trump.”
The shooter, reportedly a registered Republican, was believed to be working alone.
His father Matthew Crooks told CNN that he was trying to establish “what the hell is going on”, and would not comment until he spoke to law enforcement.
After multiple witnesses said they saw the gunman before the shooting and alerted authorities, Butler police said they had “responded to a number of reports of suspicious activity”.