Several 911 Calls Released From Trump’s Failed Assassination Attempt: “I’m Scared…”

Former president Donald Trump escaped a failed assassination attempt while addressing a rally at Butler County, Pennsylvania, on July 13th. Nearly three months after the shocking incident and countless investigative tasks by the authorities , more than a dozen 911 calls made on the day have been made public. According to NBC News , the first call coming in was recorded at around 6:12 p.m. “Gunshots at the Trump rally,” a woman’s voice exclaims. “Gunshots-” “Yep,” the emergency dispatcher interrupts. “The police are on the way there.” “Better get over here quick!”

Over the next 35 minutes, a flurry of additional calls poured into Butler County’s 911 communications center, some of which captured cries of terror in the background as the Secret Service attempted to locate the active shooter and evacuate Trump to safety. “We’re at the Trump assembly and there’s a guy shooting,” a scared woman called in, seconds later. “He’s been shooting up the place.” The dispatcher can then be heard inquiring if she was injured or with someone, to which the woman responds, “No, no one’s injured. But I’m scared.”

The 15 audio recordings of over a dozen calls are the first batch of 911 conversations made available since the assassination attempt . The recordings were made public by Butler County on Wednesday as part of a deal with two other news outlets and NBC News. Following the county’s first denial of their requests for public records, the media outlets filed a lawsuit last month to obtain the recordings.

Rallygoer Corey Comperatore, 50, was shot and killed at the event by 20-year-old lone gunman , Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Jim Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57, were also badly injured. Additionally, Trump’s right ear bled from the impact of the grazed bullet, though he was swiftly escorted off stage by a group of Secret Service personnel. The gunman was shot and killed by a Secret Service countersniper soon after the shots were fired.

However, the gunman planning the whole assassination and climbing onto a rooftop with an AR-style assault rifle less than 200 yards from Trump prompted numerous inquiries into the Secret Service and its event preparations. About ten days after the incident, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle had to resign because of the lack of information the agency could provide to solve or explain the loopholes in the case.

As such, a dispatcher in nearby Allegheny County transferred one of the calls, describing a woman who said her husband had been wounded at the event. “Paramedics serviced him,” the woman can be heard saying. “I called Butler Hospital. He’s not there. They told me to call 911.” Some of the calls that were received came from the relatives and loved ones of the attendees. A man who claimed to be from North Carolina made one of the calls, saying that his mother had just called him from the event and told him about the active shooter.

Following the shooting, Butler County officials first refused news organizations’ requests for public documents, claiming that 911 calls are normally excluded from disclosure under the state’s Right to Know Law. A provision of the statute that grants governmental agencies the authority to reveal such documents where “public interest favoring access outweighs any individual, agency, or public interest that may favor restriction of access” was the basis for the lawsuits filed by NBC News, Scripps News, and The Intercept.