Secret Service agents respond near President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump during the White House Correspondents Dinner, on Saturday. Alex Brandon/AP Inside the jammed ballroom, guests had taken their seats and were picking away at burrata and cucumber salads when it became clear the evening had taken a frightening turn. Cracking sounds in quick succession from outside the ballroom doors caused the loud hum of conversation to quickly turn silent.

It wasn’t obvious to those inside the room — situated a level below where the incident occurred — what the sounds were. Even the president himself wasn’t immediately sure what had happened. Trump’s first thought was a tray full of dinner plates crashing to the floor: “I’ve heard that many times,” he would say later from the White House, still wearing his tuxedo from the event.

But as law enforcement agents, many armed, fanned into the room from all the entrances, it became obvious a serious incident had occurred. Shouts of “get down” swept across the ballroom as guests and hotel servers dived underneath chairs and tables to take cover. The head table was cleared almost immediately.

Vice President JD Vance was pulled back from the table and taken off to the left of the stage. As agents with rifles ran to the front of the stage, the president’s Secret Service detail surrounded him, according to video from the side of the stage. As he was being evacuated, the president appeared to briefly fall to the floor before he and the first lady were whisked to a secure room in the hotel.

Those sitting alongside him were taken to a separate room down the hall. Attendees hide under tables after an incident at the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner on Saturday. Nathan Howard/Getty Images ‘It scared all of us’ Dinner attendees who had chosen that moment to leave the ballroom before the main course was served, including CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, had unfortunately put themselves in harm’s way.

Blitzer had just left a restroom outside the ballroom when he saw the gunman just feet away from him. “I start hearing gunshots in the hall right near me, and the next thing I knew, a police officer threw me to the ground and was on top of me,” Blitzer said. “The gunshots were so loud, so frightening that it scared all of us.

We had no idea what was going on.” The CNN anchor was taken back into the men’s restroom, where he and more than a dozen others sheltered in place, he said. He lost a shoe in the commotion. As the gunman charged the checkpoint, he was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives, according to law enforcement officials.

A Secret Service agent was shot in the chest during the exchange of gunfire and was OK after being taken to a hospital thanks to the bulletproof vest he was wearing, Trump later told reporters. The suspected gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old from a Los Angeles suburb who worked as a teacher and video game developer, according to public records. Officials said that he was a registered guest at the hotel and appeared to have acted alone.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks at a press conference following a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, on Saturday. Allison Robbert/AP The suspect was not struck by gunfire but was receiving treatment as a local hospital, according to Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser. Trump later on social media released the security footage of the gunman racing through the security checkpoint, as well as a photo of the suspect subdued by law enforcement on the floor.

Back in the ballroom, silence took hold, punctuated by occasional gasps. Some dinner attendees ducked behind chairs and tables, while many — reporters among them — pulled out their phones to capture the historic moment. Cabinet members who came as guests of news organizations — meaning they were scattered at tables across the tightly packed ballroom — were hurried from the room by their own security details, who barked into their communication devices as they rushed from the banquet hall.

One could be heard declaring “shots fired” into his radio. Officers combed the room, in some instances mounting