What it was like in the room when the shots rang out at the Correspondents’ Dinner
Gary O’DonoghueChief North America Correspondent at the Washington Hilton
I had just put down my knife and fork and almost didn’t notice the thuds coming from somewhere in front of me toward the main entrance to the Washington Hilton ballroom.
I did a sort of double audio take.
Within moments, I thought: That’s the thud that semi-automatic weapons make.
As a blind person, I focus on sounds and heard the glass breaking.
Then I felt the head of my colleague Daniel, with whom I had just spoken, brush and I realized that he was diving towards the ground.
I was on my knees, under the tablecloth, almost certain I was there, another Saturday night, another presidential event and in the middle of yet another shooting.
The next few moments were filled with people screaming and running.
This time it was different: in a matter of seconds we were under the table.
Another colleague told me how, as the shots rang out, he saw dozens of people running into the ballroom from the hallway outside.
During the five or ten minutes that we stood under the table, we all waited to see if a gunman had also run into the room and was about to start shooting at the twenty-five hundred people at this dinner.
A colleague told me how she saw the Secret Service on stage behind us, chasing away President Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Other officers stood in their helmets and body armor, their weapons trained on the crowd, watching for other threats.
Just before dinner, I had seen Secretary of Health RFK Jr in a small room near the ballroom. I asked him if he was looking forward to the event, and he told me he was hungry and wanted to continue. He was sitting at a table not far behind me.
And about 100 feet behind us, toward the main doors, FBI Director Kash Patel was on the floor with all of us—protecting his girlfriend—as a Secret Service agent crossed the ballroom to come to his aid.
Immediately, your mind turns to the what, the why and – in this case – especially the how. How could an armed man get close to the president, again?
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All roads around the Hilton had been closed for hours, blocked by law enforcement. But security on site was not particularly tight.
The man at the door outside only took a quick glance at my ticket from what must have been six feet away.
We took the elevator up to the ballroom and an agent tailed me but wasn’t particularly interested in the beeps triggered by the contents of my inside jacket pocket. They didn’t ask me to take out my stuff.
In short, security looked like a regular White House Correspondents’ Dinner – one without the sitting president present.
While we were held in the ballroom after the shooting, we desperately tried to get phone signal to stream shows and find out more.
I tried not to think too much about the magnitude of what had just happened.
Still, there was that telltale sting in your eyes when your mind starts to think about what could have happened. And how many of these things you will have to go through in this country before your luck runs out.
