Witness at Trump rally describes seeing the person who died being shot in head

BUTLER, Pa. — A man who was at former President Donald Trump's rally here on Saturday described the moment he saw another attendee drop to the ground, dead, after being shot in the head.

NBC News spoke with the witness, identified only by his first name, Joseph, who appeared to speak about the moment a single spectator was killed at the event when shots rang out just moments after Trump began speaking.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he was "shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear." Blood was seen on his ear and the right side of his face, and he went to the ground after the shots were fired.

Follow live coverage of the shooting at Trump's Pennsylvania rally

Trump is safe and is expected to survive, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.

A spectator was killed and two were critically injured in the shooting, the Secret Service said in a statement. The suspect was killed.

Joseph said he was sitting in a set of bleachers at the far left of the podium when he heard "several gunshots" ring out. He said he saw a man a couple of yards away fall to the bottom of the bleachers after having been shot in the head.

He said it was "rather chaotic at that point" as he was trying to figure out where the gunshots were coming from. He said that it seemed the shots were coming from behind the bleachers and that the man was hit from behind, in the back of the head.

Joseph said the man appeared to have been killed instantly.

State police and a SWAT team then began evacuating everyone in the bleachers. Joseph said that he helped officials carry the dead man off of the bleachers to a tent nearby and that officials put a towel over his head before they carried him off.

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