Caitriona Perry

anyway so you can get into the hotel without having to have you know a security sweep or anything like that because obviously there are guests in the hotel and there are drinks receptions that go on of people who aren't invited to the dinner as well but to get to where the dinner is you have to show a ticket you go down a set of escalators and then there's a kind of red carpet and all of that Did the security seem very tight to you walking in Katrina?

It was normal.

As I say, when you approach the room is when the security is there.

So you can be in the hotel, you can be in a couple of floors of the hotel before you have to engage with any Secret Service or law enforcement or anything like that.

And then you go through, similar to airport security, not as tight as airport security, but there's a magnetometer where you walk through, metal detector essentially.

And there's also law enforcement personnel if you've got a handbag or a backpack or anything like that.

We'll go through it.

And from there, then there's a drinks reception area and go down another flight of stairs into the ballroom itself.

And it was at that security area, one flight of stairs from the ballroom, where this individual, I mean, you've seen the video the president shared, just rushes through the agents and then they race after him with guns.

So we're all in the room at this point in time.

The official programme had started and I was sitting in a table kind of in the middle of the room.

There's like an aisle going up the middle of the room and that's where I was.

And we heard a commotion outside, some loud noises and the doors burst open.

There was kind of like a kerfuffle of breaking glass and crockery and tables being knocked over and Secret Service agents rushing up this middle aisle

beside the table where I was, with guns drawn, shouting, everyone take cover, everyone take cover, at which point everybody jumped under the tables in the dining room and the agents kept running towards the podium where the President was seated with the members of the White House Response Association, the First Lady, the Vice President.

At the same time, agents rushed in from the side of the stage as well, bundled everyone up there onto the floor, got the President, the First Lady and the Vice President out

As you can expect, in a room full of journalists, we all had our heads under the table and our hands above our phones, recording what was going on.

I think people were mostly calm because the shots were fired outside of the dining room.

The sound was muffled.

So if you were sitting right up near the top table, you probably couldn't hear it.