Loud bangs and a Trump evacuation: Chaos at White House correspondents’ dinner

WASHINGTON – It was meant to be a glitzy Saturday night at a Washington ballroom featuring President Donald Trump, but the glamor was shattered by gunshots that left guests diving to the floor and the US leader bundled out by security personnel.

Mr Trump was seated on the dais at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner – the first time he is attending as president – when loud bangs disrupted the revelry and caused him and others on stage to look up in alarm.

Video captured by AFPTV, other news outlets, and AFP reporters attending the event showed a chaotic scene unfolding.

Moments after what sounded like gunshots, cries of “Stay down!” and “Get down!” were heard while guests, including correspondents, officials in the Trump administration and some members of his cabinet took cover.

Amid the chaos, the president was quickly surrounded by US Secret Service personnel, their weapons drawn, and they quickly rushed Mr Trump off the stage and through a back curtain as the crowd crouched in shock.

The big band music stopped, and people in ball gowns and tuxedos turned quiet as agents swarmed around tables and over guests on the floor of the massive ballroom of the Washington Hilton, the very hotel where president Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt 45 years earlier.

“Shots fired upstairs,” said Mr Mehmet Oz, Trump’s administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as he was being evacuated by security.

Also seen being rushed out of the ballroom was Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr – whose uncle, president John F. Kennedy, was felled by an assassin’s bullet in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

Ms Alexandra Ingersoll, a correspondent for One America News, told AFP she was inside when the commotion began, and saw Secret Service spring into action to protect the president.

“I just ducked under the table and I was like ‘I’m not going to risk this,’“ she told AFP. “I didn’t know if the shooter was neutralized or what was going on.”

With still few details on what actually occurred, the entire ballroom was ordered evacuated, and several hundred guests made their way into the Hilton lobby and out into the chilly air.

Guests were seen hugging, making calls, texting friends and loved ones, and their news bureaux.

Later the Secret Service said in a statement that it was investigating a shooting near the main security screening perimeter for the event.

“The president and the first lady are safe, along (with) all protectees,” the agency said. “One individual is in custody.”

It was not immediately clear whether the assailant fired shots, or security agents responded to the threat with gunfire of their own.

At about 8.40 pm (8.40am, Singapore time), an AFP reporter saw police officers racing through the streets surrounding the Hilton, lifting barriers, ushering passersby over to different streets, and clearing cars from the area as quickly as possible.

A helicopter circled overhead.

A few minutes later, a motorcade left the Hilton, in the direction of the White House. AFP