WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:04.000
I was in the first seat. There was a call to be answered on the floor. 

2
00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:13.500
I got up and I took about three or four steps and I heard the shooting begin, and then a ricochet occurred very close to me. 

3
00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:20.000
And the fact is, it hit above my head, on one of the marble columns, and that ricochet shot. 

4
00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:30.500
That's how I very clearly—although it sounded, because of the large chamber, it sounded like a package of firecrackers were lit and set off,

5
00:00:30.500 --> 00:00:36.000
but with the ricochet, in my mind, it identified it as a shot, so I hit the floor very quickly. 

6
00:00:36.700 --> 00:00:47.800
To this day, I say to myself I was very lucky, because I could have been one of the victims that were shot, but I wasn't, and it didn't come that near, it was like ten, twelve feet away. 

7
00:00:47.800 --> 00:00:54.200
But what it did is it allowed me to go through the mental processes of what had happened very quickly.

8
00:00:54.200 --> 00:01:00.000
So once I got up off the floor, when the shooting stopped, and it stopped in a very limited period of time. 

9
00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:07.000
I think there had been 29 shots or something, and they went off with great rapidity, out of a number of weapons. 

10
00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:15.000
I got up, checked the floor and we were in the middle of a roll call vote or a quorum call. 

11
00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:28.000
And, obviously, there was some shouting and so and so was down and so and so, and Mr. Fallon from Maryland had been standing in the back of the chamber seats, and he'd been hit in the buttocks. 

12
00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:35.000
I was aware that there were Members shot, so I got up immediately and went down to check on who was the most serious. 

13
00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:42.000
I alerted my other fellow Pages that we needed stretchers, and we actually—funny enough, Bill and I…

14
00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:48.500
Bill was on the floor too—we sort of took over, ordering the stretchers and getting people put together.

15
00:01:48.500 --> 00:01:56.000
And a group of maybe a half dozen of us really started getting the people put in the stretchers, identifying who they were, 

16
00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:00.000
and by the time that the ambulances arrived, we were taking them out. 

17
00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:04.900
And, Bill and I, I think carried about three Members of the five or six that were wounded, out.