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Sophia Zang, 17, of Connoquenessing Township, wrote the following essay as a school assignment during the 2024-25 school year.

On July 3, we first were informed about President Trump’s plan to hold a rally at the Butler Farm Show.

My family and I were all so excited to hear the news and reserved our tickets as soon as we could.

It was cool to see the rally committee starting to deliver things and set up in the week leading up to the event.

On Friday night, the evening before the rally took place, we drove over to the Farm Show to check things out. We got there and walked in without an issue. We hung out in the seating area near the podium for a while just watching people decorate the seating area and set up the sound systems.

When they started to unfold the flag, we went over and were able to help hold the flag as the cranes slowly raised it into the air. It was a beautiful sight watching that giant, majestic flag get raised in front of a gorgeous summer evening sky.

After the flag was raised, I managed to quickly get my picture taken on the podium. That will forever be a cherished picture to me.

After all that, we headed home for the night filled with excitement and anticipation of the day to come.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early hoping to get there as early as we could.

We got to Buttercup Road around 7:30 a.m. but they still had it blocked off. We ended up just pulling over on the side of the road and waiting until the road finally opened a little after 8 a.m.

We parked and walked right into the grounds and were able to get in line right away. We were one of the first 10 people in line. My uncle had his tractor and combine on display around the stage and that permitted us to be in the special guest line. We waited in line for hours.

It was about 90 degrees or more that day with full sun. They were passing out water to people, but it was just too hot. It seemed like people were passing out left and right from heat exhaustion.

It was around 12:45 p.m. before they finally let us through.

After getting through security, we all ran down to the seating area, and then had to wait down there a little bit before they actually let us in to get our seats.

I managed to be first in line down there.

Once they let us in, we claimed second row seating directly in front of the podium. In total, there were twelve of our family members all together in that second row. Sometime during our long wait, the flag managed to get tangled.

Some people were saying it looked like an eagle and others said it looked like an angel.

As time went on people started to see that it was not going to get untangled by itself. Everyone started chanting “Fix the flag, fix the flag, fix the flag.”

So they ended up lowering it a bit, and it untangled itself. Everyone cheered as they raised it back up.

The first speaker didn't start until around 4 p.m., so we had lots of time to waste. We went and got some food and some cold drinks to try and cool us off.

There were people everywhere so we could hardly get out. There were people in the aisleways and right up against the fence around the podium.

Once the speakers started, people started yelling at each other to sit down or move out of the way. It seemed quite unorganized, and people were everywhere — not like other Trump rallies that we had been to in previous election years.

Eventually, everyone calmed down, and all was well.

Trump started to walk out onto the stage at 6:02 p.m.

God Bless the USA blasted from the speakers as Trump walked down the stage runway, waving as he headed towards the podium.

Everyone stood, cheered, and recorded as he made his entrance.

Once he got to the podium he started his speech.

A few minutes in, he decides he wants to go off teleprompter and show a chart. The chart appears up on the big screens and just as he turned to his right to talk about something on the chart, that's the moment when his life would flash before his eyes.

At 6:11 p.m, just as he turned his head, a bullet grazed his ear. He thankfully realized what was going on and ducked before anyone could even figure out what had just happened.

To me, it didn't sound like a gunshot, it sounded like a firecracker.

The Secret Service immediately jumped on top of Trump, and the crowd started to realize what was going on. Many people started getting down and taking cover from the gunshots that were still coming.

Now, when the first shot was fired, I wasn't looking at Trump, I was looking at the screen to his left, which is opposite the direction of the shooter.

So at first, I had no idea what was going on. I just remember getting down on the ground and still hearing gunshots.

I could hear screams of people everywhere.

When I finally managed to look up, all I saw was Trump attempting to get up off the ground with blood dripping down his face.

I immediately started crying thinking he was seriously injured and most likely going to die.

After I heard the one Secret Service agent yell “shooter is down,” I popped my head up above the chairs a bit to see if he was OK. That is when the Secret Service started to escort him off the stage.

I could hear Trump telling them to get his shoes and then seconds later came the most powerful moment in his history. He raised his fist into the air, blood dripping down his face, and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

The crowd immediately went wild and cheered as he was escorted to, and loaded into, his car and drove away.

Once I felt safe enough to fully stand up I looked around and noticed there were people injured. All I could really see was blood covering the stands. There were many people huddled around it was hard to see much else.

After awkwardly standing there for a few minutes, we were told to leave. So we all calmly walked out to our car.

No one really had any clue still of what had happened.

We knew there were people shot in both bleachers, so the only reasonable explanation at the time seemed to be that there were two shooters.

Some were saying that the man sitting in the left side bleachers, who was shot in the head (later identified as Corey Comperatore), was the second shooter and that he was shot by the Secret Service. We also heard other people say that the second shooter was still on the loose.

We really had no idea what the truth was, everyone was saying something different.

When we got back to our car, we all had a bunch of texts and missed calls from people. We tried to text them back, but there was zero service.

Eventually, though, we were able to get in touch with people. We ended up having to sit in the car for hours just waiting to even move towards the exit.

Finally, once we got out, we were able to get home pretty quickly since we only live a couple miles away.

We turned on the TV as soon as we got home to try and figure out what had just happened. No one really had an exact answer yet, just a bunch of theories.

But as weeks went on we started finding out the truth.