AUSTIN (KXAN) – When Ben Shrader, 25, picked up the phone this week, he thought someone was playing a joke. The caller claimed to be from the campaign team of former President Donald Trump, inviting him to a weekend rally in Pennsylvania.
“I didn’t believe that it was real at first,” Shrader said. “I found out Friday. I was on a plane, and then here.”
The Austin man spoke to NewsNation affiliate KXAN’s Josh Hinkle via Zoom late Saturday night in his hotel room just miles from the rally in Butler, slightly sunburnt and disheveled after the previous several hours of chaos.
“It went from a great day to – well, not,” he recalled.
Through Shrader’s participation in various Republican events in Texas, he believes the campaign had learned not only of his support for the man now running for a second term leading the country but also of Shrader’s own fight two years ago – a 12-hour surgery, 61 stitches and a heavy round of radiation to remove a large tumor that left him deaf in his right ear.
“I had a golf ball-sized acoustic neuroma growing underneath my brain and pushing up against my brain stem,” he explained, turning away from his web camera to reveal a long scar stretching from the base of his neck into his upper scalp. “If I didn’t get it out, I would’ve had a stroke.”
Attention surrounding his survival story would eventually lead him to another close call Saturday – nearly a half-hour after meeting Trump face-to-face with other VIPs invited to the rally.
“I walked up – little old me – and he put out his hand,” he recounted, smiling. “And I said, ‘It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. President.’ And we talked for a few moments, and we got some pictures. It’s kind of crazy to be talking to somebody and then see them get shot a few moments later.”
Shrader’s seat was to the left of the stage at the front of the crowd in a section for special guests. He remembered seeing the mayor of Butler, Congressional leaders and even Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller around him As Trump took the stage, Shrader said he stood and pulled out his phone to document one of the most exciting moments of his life.
“We were close to him, I mean, maybe 50 yards, probably less than that,” he said, adding that his back was to a warehouse-type building away from the rally where he would later learn a suspected shooter had climbed on the roof to take aim.
“And I hear a quiet pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,” he detailed, pausing for a moment. “I don’t know, my best guess is it was eight or nine shots. It was a lot, and I know what a gunshot sounds like. And so, I got on the ground, and I made sure that I was the smallest target possible.”
Video Shrader captured on his phone in those moments shows his perspective, quickly falling to the ground, shakily focusing on the grass as someone nearby screams, “One’s shot! We need an ambulance!” Another person cries, “Oh, my God!” Confusion and questions blur into one another as Shrader steadies himself to figure out what was happening.
“I turn and look behind me, and I just see – I couldn’t tell man or woman, but I just see a lot of blood,” he said. “Because about maybe four or five meters behind me and to my left in the bleachers, somebody got hit.”
On the phone video, which Shrader shared with KXAN, he periodically tilts the camera to his face, almost as if verifying he is still there. At one point, he utters, “Shot at the president… someone shot at the president.” Then cheers and applause take over.
“I look up to where the president is, and I see him kind of do like this motion,” he tells KXAN, as he puts his hands over his ears. “Then I see him just hold up a fist in the air.”
With Trump standing and apparently wounded, Shrader said he watched as Secret Service members rushed the candidate offstage. He later learned the injury to the top edge of the president’s ear was not serious. Shrader’s thoughts quickly shifted to his own family back home watching the scene unfold live on television.
“I immediately texted my parents and told them that I’m OK because it could’ve been bad,” he said, reflecting on those injured and killed nearby. “Afterwards, you’re like – I almost got shot today. I was really close. The person [in the stands] was maybe a little bit farther than the wall behind me [in the hotel room], and I was also directly in the line from where that building was to the president. That was right where I was sitting, standing up with my phone up. It could’ve been a very different day for me.”
After the suspected shooter was killed on that rooftop not so far away, he said law enforcement began clearing the crowd. Shrader continued snapping photos, as he left. They show dozens of fear-struck supporters, clutching campaign signs for an event he had hoped earlier would be a lifelong memory.
“I definitely have to go say some prayers, because I had my rosary beads in my pocket – and maybe that helped out,” he said, as his voice broke briefly. “I’ve never seen somebody who’s been shot before… I think that it’s probably a day, sadly, that I will try to forget.”
KXAN Investigative Producer Dalton Huey and Photojournalist/Editor Lauren Ryan contributed to this report.