David Smith

It was stunning.

The biggest thing I remember was just being utterly sort of confused and that sense of commotion and just not knowing what was happening.

We were crouching under these tables as I looked around.

I could see fear in the eyes of some of the guests.

There was an eerie silence for a while and then we saw these

Secret Service agents moving swiftly through the room treading on chairs to get to the stage and I got up to look what was happening.

Trump and Vance had been whisked away and there were armed police there with helmets and rifles scouting out the room and just a general sense of disbelief for everybody and then in the minutes that ensued slowly but surely a certain kind of normality

returned and we got up and we started talking to each other.

And of course, in a room full of journalists, there are a lot of phone calls to editors and people shooting video on their phones.

That's right.

The authorities say Alan is 31 years old.

He's from near Los Angeles in California, is a teacher with a background in computer science and apparently enjoyed making video games, evidence perhaps of a small political donation.

He apparently travelled to this event by train from California, which is a fairly unusual thing to do, and the suspicion there is perhaps he was avoiding airport metal detectors by going on the train.

He apparently stayed as a guest in the hotel, which would have allowed him to get past at least some of the

security.

And yes, on Sunday, we got evidence reportedly of a manifesto.

He wrote a letter to a family where he set out his contempt, his disdain for the Trump administration, saying he couldn't believe this is the government of the US and setting out a plan to target as many officials as possible.

Also pleading for forgiveness and repeatedly apologizing for what he was about to do.

Yes, and of course he opened fire and shot a Secret Service agent who was protected by his body armor.

I think the main discussion on Sunday in Washington was how could this happen, this kind of security breach.