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The shooting on Saturday streaked blood across Trump’s face and set off panic among the thousands of people attending the rally in the city of Butler in Pennsylvania.
Trump’s campaign said the Republican presidential candidate was “doing well” after the shooting, which the former leader said pierced the upper part of his right ear. At least one spectator was killed and two others were critically wounded, according to authorities.
Investigators believe that Crooks, armed with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, opened fire at the former president while he was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving one audience member dead and two others wounded.
The 20-year-old kitchen worker was shot dead at the scene by a Secret Service sniper, officials said.
In his well-to-do hometown, however, neighbors are in shock, seemingly unable to grasp how a quiet young man is now accused in the shooting.
The FBI, for its part, has said only that Crooks was the “subject involved in the assassination attempt on the former president and that an active investigation was underway.
The shooting took place after Trump, 78, just started his speech. The former president grabbed his right ear with his right hand, then brought his hand down to look at it before dropping to his knees behind the podium. Secret Service agents then swarmed Trump, before he emerged and pumped his fist in the air, appearing to mouth the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
He was later whisked from the stage and ushered into a vehicle.
“I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform following the shooting. “Much bleeding took place.”
The FBI called the attack an “assassination attempt” and said it had taken the lead in investigating the case.
The attack was the most serious assassination attempt on a US president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It came in a deeply polarised political atmosphere, just four months from the presidential elections and days before Trump is to be officially named the Republican nominee at his party’s convention – which his campaign said would proceed as planned.