Immediately before the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Gala in Washington, D.C., which occurred at about 8:35 p.m. local time on Saturday (2:35 a.m. CEST on Sunday), the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel was in a festive mood. Everything changed quickly when shots were heard from outside, describe the mood in the room, reporters from the Reuters and AFP agencies present.
26/04/2026 11:20
A suspected teacher and a game developer were detained at the scene Cole Thomas Allenwho told security forces he was targeting members of the Trump administration. The president, First Lady Melania Trump, and members of the Cabinet were not injured in the shooting.
About 2,600 guests in suits and evening gowns had just settled down to a first course of salad and a glass of wine. President Donald Trump sat on the stage at the main table with the first lady, the vice president and other senior government officials, Reuters describes the moments just before the attack. Subsequently, “audible but mysterious bangs” were heard, interrupting the conversation of the guests.
The present big band stopped playing and silence reigned in the hall for a few seconds, AFP reported. Trump later said that when he first heard the bangs, he thought it was a falling tray of food. A shooter in a bulletproof vest and armed with several weapons, including a shotgun and knives at the same time broke through the security checkpoint in the hotel lobby in the area directly in front of the banquet hall, the agency added.
Subsequently, the door to the hall was broken open, and in a different room than the one where the president was, a secret service agent was shot in the bulletproof vest. Chaos then erupted in the main hall as agents immediately began evacuating the president and other protected individuals while guests hid under tables, Reuters reported.
As soon as the shots rang out, members of the president’s bodyguards, with guns drawn, immediately surrounded the president and the first lady and hurried them off the stage behind the back curtain. The US Secret Service escorted Vice President JD Vance from his hotel room about ten seconds before President Donald Trump.
Video footage released by MS NOW also captured the evacuated president falling surrounded by agents.
Plainclothes agents knocked cabinet members sitting among journalists to the ground and pushed them under desks for cover. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy were rushed out of the room. Interior Secretary Markwayne Mullin was pushed into a side room by agents, and House Speaker Mike Johnson was dragged away by agents by his tuxedo jacket, according to Reuters.
As for the guests, after shouts of “To the ground!” and “Stay down!” in elegant evening dresses and tuxedos, they began to hide under tables and chairs, the AFP reporter wrote.
“I just hid under the table and said to myself, ‘I’m not going to risk this,'” One America News reporter Alexandra Ingersoll, who was in the room at the time, told AFP. “I didn’t know if the shooter was neutralized or what was actually happening,” she added.
Some guests began chanting “USA! USA! USA!”, according to Reuters. After being evacuated to the lobby and to the street, people hugged and called their loved ones, Reuters added. Later in the evening, when the situation calmed down, the gentlemen untied their bow ties, the ladies kicked off their high heels and the guests gradually left the hotel while people at the hotel bar filmed them on mobile phones.
