A night of excitement and high energy at a Donald Trump political rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday quickly turned to one of terror for Sherry Thellman.
Thellman, of Hermitage, Pennsylvania and her boyfriend, Matt Frontino, said they could see and feel the bullets whizzing by after they had made their way to the fence line at the rally where gunfire erupted.
One person was killed and two more were injured. Former President Trump was also injured in what the FBI is calling an assassination attempt.
On Sunday morning, Thellman said she was still feeling and reliving the emotional trauma of the previous night’s events that unfolded before her eyes.
The couple are avid Trump supporters. Frontino attended a Trump rally during the 2016 campaign.
“I wanted to experience it, too,” she said. They found out through Facebook that he would be in Butler County, and she and Frontino registered to attend. The gates opened at 1 p.m., and they waited nearly two-and-a-half hours in line to clear security, they said. Trump was scheduled to speak at 5 p.m. but the speech was delayed until around 6, she said. Meanwhile, they stood in the hot sun.
Event organizers provided water for the attendees, along with air conditioning units and cooling stations, but people needed medical attention and passed out long before the speech began. Emergency responders were carrying some people out on stretchers, they said.
“When his speech started, we made our way to the left-hand side of the grass area and were the first ones along the fence line,” Thellman said. “We were very close.”
“We were looking toward where he was speaking and all of a sudden, we heard these real loud cracks,” she said. She doesn’t remember how many gunshots she heard, only that everyone was yelling, “hit the ground, hit the ground, keep your heads down!”
She and Frontino were lying down and they heard a pause, lifted their heads, then heard more gunfire “and everyone was screaming again to keep our heads down, cover our heads.”
After the shooting ceased, they were told to remain down, she said. “I don’t think they thought they had neutralized the shooter. Guys were walking around with bulletproof vests and people were asking if anyone was hit.
“It was terrifying,” Thellman said. “At one point, the bullets were so close that I felt that any minute I would feel pain. It was scary. There was nowhere to go to shelter.
“This was absolutely tragic,” she said. “It was so much fun and everyone was being so nice to each other and all was going so well right before this happened. After this, my nerves were just shot.”
Jackie Thompson of Pulaski Township, northwest of Butler, said she was in the crowd with a friend. They arrived between 2 and 2:30 p.m. and were standing in the middle of the crowd.
“I was in the audience and everyone was having a great time. It was very hot and people were sitting on the ground and trying to stay cool and drink water,” she said.
After Trump started talking, “we heard pops. It sounded muffled, and it took a second to register what was happening.
“Everyone was either ducking down and staying low or running,” she said. She and her friend squatted and ran out. She was one of many who made a quick exit after the second series of shots rang out.
“It sounded like three pops, a quick pause, then you heard another one,” she said. She believes that the second one was when the Secret Service directed a shot at the shooter, identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, and killed him.
“It was so quick, but they’re trained professionals,” she said.
As she and her friend exited, police and security directly people to get out quickly.
“For the number of people there and it being a scary situation, no one was shoving or pushing and everyone was respectful of one another and looked out for other people,” Thompson said. ‘From the time we left to being out on the road was less than 15 minutes. When you have several thousand people, that’s almost unheard of.”
Reflecting on it on Sunday, she commented, “It was kind of a surreal moment, realizing what happened. You hear about these things but to have something like this happen in a smaller community, it’s hard to fully grasp how serious the situations are.”