Western New Yorkers at Trump rally share what they saw during shooting

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A number of Western New Yorkers made the few-hour drive to Butler, Pa. on Saturday to attend the rally held in support of former U.S. President Donald Trump. They shared with WBEN their accounts of what they heard and saw during the shooting that injured the former President, and left one audience member dead.

"I have to state that this was surreal," said Joyce Gallagher of Buffalo during an appearance with David Bellavia on Monday.

"We were trying to get closer to the area that [Trump] was, and so therefore, we saw one of the Secret Service men going toward the [stage], so we followed him. And soon after that, we heard that pop, pop, pop, pop. And somebody said, get down. Your brain is trying to process the pop pop, it could be anything, it could be firecrackers. It could be some kind of prank or whatever. But, you know, that's the point where the surreal comes into play. Immediately, you saw people on the stage ducking, and you also notice people saying, 'Get down, seriously get down' and I have never seen people flatten on the ground as far and as fast as I did."

"At first, I seen him grab his ear, but then he went down," said Rich from Angola, who was in the front row behind Trump during the rally. "We didn't notice he was wounded, but then the Secret Service jumped on top of him right away."

Gallagher also noted the amount of emotion in the aftermath of the shooting.

"There were people angry, the rally consisted a lot of young people. It was really outstanding, just the amount of young people and families, families that were there," Gallagher said. "And what I recollect is that, there were people crying and they were on their phones saying the [former] President's been shot, there was mayhem, people got up and went straight to their cars. It was like a herd, it was crazy."

Rich tells a similar story, but also notes the Secret Service were very professional in handling the crowd.

"They kept people calm, and they they did their jobs exactly the way you would expect them to do it. I know, they're getting a little bad rap for certain things, security issues. But for the most part, they they were very, very, very professional. They were very good to the crowd. And they had us locked down inside the corral until the end, until everything was definitely neutralized, the crowd just was quiet and they walked away."