Mo Brooks tells of shooting: Steve Scalise ‘crawled out to the outfield, leaving a trail of blood’

Rep. Mo Brooks described his eyewitness account of the multiple shooting Wednesday at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a number of aides and two U.S. Capitol Police officers were shot, according to multiple news reports. The shooting suspect is in custody.

“I was on deck about to hit batting practice on the third base side of home plate, and I hear a loud bam,” Mr. Brooks told CNN. “And I look around and behind third base, in the third base dugout, which is cinder blocks, I see a rifle and a little bit of a body, and then I hear another blam, and I realize there is an active shooter.”

The Alabama congressman continued: “At the same I hear [Rep.] Steve Scalise over near second base scream. He was shot. he’s our majority whip. the gun was a semi automatic. It continues to fire at different people. All the people on the field scatter. I run around to the first base side of home plate. We have a batting cage that has plastic wrapped around it for the foul balls and hide behind it. It’s plastic, it’s not real good. I’m laying on the ground with two or three others as gunfire continues. I hear a break in the gunfire and decided to take a chance and ran to the dugout, which is also cinder block and down about 2 or 3 feet.

“There were a number of congressmen and staffers who held us. One of them was wounded in the leg, so I took off my belt and so myself and another congressmen, don’t remember who, made a tourniquet to try and slow the bleeding. At the same time, I’m on the right side of dugout, and there’s gunfire within about 5 or 6 or 7 feet of my head, and I look up, and there’s a guy with a gun blasting away. Fortunately it was one of the good guys, one of our security details who was shooting back — our pistol verses shooter’s rifle.

“Another security detail was closer to home plate — there must have been 50-100 shots fired. Eventually it seems the hooter shot both security detail. There were some congressmen on phones screaming for reinforcements.

“Eventually, the shooter starts circling around third base — this is my understanding — the shooter starts coming around home plate towards us — and security detail took him down.

“Once we got the all-clear that the shooter was down, we ran out to second base where Steve Scalise, he had crawled out to the outfield, leaving a trail of blood, and we started giving him some liquids, and I put pressure on his wound and his hip. And Brad Wenstrup from Ohio, fortunately he’s a physician, started doing what you needed to do to minimize blood loss.

“A helicopter landed in center field and took away whomever folks decided was the most wounded or most critical. At that time, police were causing all of us to gather on the first base line.”