On Saturday, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner came to an abrupt end due to a shooting incident that happened outside the ballroom.
Anvee Bhutani, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was among the journalists who attended the dinner. She told KNX News’ Susanne Whatley she heard the shots ring out.
“I was at a table pretty close to the front stage. We initially heard, Secret Service - or what we thought and later learned was the Secret Service - yelling for people to get down and saying there was an armed gunman,” she said. “So, we all kind of got down under our tables, and we later heard three sort of bang bang bang noises, and most of us were still underneath our tables at that time - although there's some video footage that's been circulating that people sneakily took. It was complete chaos because no one knew what was going on, and we were all waiting for further instructions, trying to make sense of what had just taken place, and it was a room full of hundreds of journalists.”
She called it an “unexpected” and “scary situation.”
“We were kind of hiding under the table and not sure how long it would last,” she said. “There was very little information inside the room as well. The internet connection was really poor, so it was frightening because we had no details on what had just taken place and no way of figuring out either, for the first few minutes, what was going on.”
Bhutani also described what security had been like getting into the ballroom prior to the shooting.
“All you had to do was present a paper invitation,” she said. “There was no check of IDs, and that got you into the building initially, and then when you later wanted to get into the ballroom for dinner, there was a small sort of metal detector system, as well as a bag check, but bags were not sent through any kind of scanning, and there wasn't a huge sort of airport-style security system at all.”
Bhutani said this was the first time she’s ever gone to the infamous dinner. When asked if she plans to return, she said she’s not sure.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
