'It was pure insanity' Shock and horror as rally erupts into chaos

A mid a sea of red Make America Great Again caps, Trump 2024 placards and cheers from thousands of raucous supporters, Donald Trump's Saturday evening campaign rally in a Pennsylvanian field began indistinguishable from scores of similar events that had taken place before it.

- Richard Luscombe

The Republican former US president took the stage and launched quickly into a familiar riff on numbers of migrants infiltrating the southern border, pointing to a graphic on a giant display screen behind him to amplify his point.

The time was just before 6.15pm.

On a rooftop barely 130 metres away, unnoticed other than by a handful of observers who raised the alarm too late to prevent what was about to happen, a would-be assassin with a rifle was crawling into position.

There followed, in the words of one witness who described the events at Butler Farm show grounds, scenes of "pure insanity".

A volley of seven or eight shots that sounded to some spectators "like fireworks going off", left Trump injured, blood visible from an apparent head wound; a man in the stands dead; and at least two more spectators, believed to be a man and a woman, critically wounded.

As Trump clutched at his ear and ducked to the floor, a number of Secret Service agents raced to the stage to encircle and protect him.

The presidential candidate lost his shoes in the confusion, and called to be reunited with them as he was bundled off to safety. But he also stuck out a raised fist and exhorted the crowd to "fight! fight! fight!" as press cameras furiously snapped.

"I was hoping it was just a prank, that it was a bad joke," Blake Marnell, who was sitting in the front row, told the Guardian.

Trump, Marnell said, was "essentially being tackled to the ground" by the Secret Service.