Brian Fitzpatrick’s fiancée was on stage when shots were fired at the White House correspondents’ dinner

When U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick heard shots fire at the White House correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, he was focused on one thing: his fiancée, Jacqui Heinrich, who was on stage with President Donald Trump, sitting beside Vice President J.D. Vance.

A man armed with guns and knives attempted to storm into the association’s dinner Saturday night, where Trump was slated to speak. The 31-year-old defendant Cole Tomas Allen, who was apprehended on the scene and is in custody, was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate Trump.

Fitzpatrick became engaged last year to Heinrich, a Fox News anchor and senior White House correspondent Heinrich who is on the board of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA). She will also begin serving as the association’s president in 2027.

“I heard a sound that is unfortunately all too familiar, so I knew something was wrong right away,” Fitzpatrick, a former FBI special agent and federal prosecutor, told 6ABC.

“Honestly, I was worried about Jacqui, you know, she was at the head table,” he added. “That was all I cared about, you know. And I tried to get back, but the Secret Service had assured me that she was okay.”

Video footage shows Heinrich, a blonde woman wearing a sparkling red gown, slipping under the head table on stage as agents escorted Vance offstage amid a chaotic scene. The video was recorded by Getty photojournalist Andrew Harnik, another WHCA board member.

Though they were in the same room, they had no way to speak directly while she was hiding on the floor, since her phone was on top of the table.

Heinrich posted online that she ended up “hiding under the head table” instead of speaking on stage like she was scheduled. She said she laid on the floor after agents took Vance away.

“One agent asked the other ‘are you tracking it?’ - the other said ‘no’,” she said in the post. “For a minute, it wasn’t clear if there was no threat in the room or if they just couldn’t see it. I said a prayer and wished I had my phone, which was on the table, to text my mom at home, and fiance who was at a table in the crowd. Soon, an agent nodded to me that it was OK to crawl backstage - so I did.”

The next day she interviewed Trump on Fox News and said the event recognized “the role of a free press in our democracy.”

“We’re all sad that it went the way that it did,” she said. “We’re all grateful that we get to come home to our loved ones and be together afterward.”

In a post on social media, Fitzpatrick lauded the Secret Service and law enforcement officers for acting “without hesitation and with extraordinary professionalism.”

“In a moment of danger and chaos, they brought courage, calm, and order to the entire room,” he said. “I am deeply grateful for their service.

“May we unite in prayer for our country, lower the temperature, reject hatred, and remember the responsibility we share to one another and to the nation we love,” he added.

He also praised First Lady Melania Trump for providing “aid and comfort to those who were ushered backstage, including my fiancée, Jacqui” in another post after the third instance of violence that seemed to be directed at her husband.

Fitzpatrick proposed to Heinrich last summer while on a trip to Provence, France in the middle of a lavender field at sunrise. She started working for Fox in 2018 as a reporter in New York before covering the 2020 presidential election and moving to Washington, D.C. to in 2021, where she covered Congress before becoming a White House correspondent.

Fitzpatrick on social media praised CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Weijia Jiang, the WHCA’s current president for conducting “herself with class, with poise, with calm and with the utmost professionalism.”

Jiang said in a statement that the purpose of the dinner was to celebrate the First Amendment and the work of journalists.

“Last night, those journalists showed exactly the kind of calm and courage that work demands, jumping into reporting immediately after the incident unfolded,” she said in a statement Sunday. “We are proud of everyone in that room.”