A White House Correspondents’ Dinner volunteer said the suspected gunman appeared to assemble a “long” weapon in a lightly monitored area near the terrace-level entrance before opening fire and rushing toward the ballroom.
The witness, Helen Mabus, a volunteer working the event who said she is from Harrisburg, Pa., described a “makeshift room” near the entrance where bar carts were being stored and where “there was no security” at the time.
“He was in that room […] he grabbed it out of a bag or something,” Mabus said, adding that the weapon “was long” and “didn’t look like a typical gun.”
