A Youngstown man said he returned from Washington D.C. around midnight Jan. 6 to find his tires slashed.

Two buses carrying some 60 people departed Butler, Pa., that day headed to the Capitol to show support for President Donald J. Trump. Things quickly turned foul as the crowd stormed the building — something 91-year-old Roland Brothers said was staged.

He said: “250,000 people were there and it was the most peaceful demonstration I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The police, he added, “let everyone in and it was staged. It was all set up.”

Brothers said the crowd was “jam-packed” and there wasn’t a problem initially.

Brothers, a Korean War veteran, said he has been involved in many demonstrations.

“I love my country and I served my country. I saw this as a way I could do something,” Brothers said. “I’m so frustrated how things are going in our crooked government.”

While in the city, Brothers said he couldn’t believe the way the 250,000-plus crowd was treated.

“They treated us like dogs. Everything was shut down,” Brothers said. “It was horrible.”

He noted that nothing was open and a few businesses had boarded their doors and windows, while almost all of them were closed, he said. He added there was no place to get food other than some street vendors, and access to restrooms was “off the beaten path.”

Also attending Wednesday’s rally was retired Navy SEAL Adam Newbold of Lisbon. He said he felt compelled to attend Wednesday’s Save America rally but came away troubled after a mob invaded and vandalized the U.S. Capitol.

“It’s a sad day. Who would have ever thought that we would be at a point with this strong nation where people so proud to be an American, that we now have people ashamed to be Americans, ashamed of their country, at odds with each other?” and Wednesday’s events have contributed to that, he said.

Newbold said he and about 50 to 60 like-minded local residents drove to the nation’s capital Tuesday night so they could attend the Save America rally. Newbold said he was there in support of President Trump, and because of his concerns about alleged election fraud and the general direction of the country.

“I have championed my belief that our country is in a bad place, and I believe that wholeheartedly. I believe there is corruption at the highest levels,” he said. “Some people that don’t know me or ATG assume we went down there to swarm the Capitol and that we were part of that … That’s not who are. We don’t do that stuff.”

ATG Worldwide is Newbold’s specialized training and security business.

After arriving in Washington, they began the long walk to the Elipse, a large field located between the National Mall and White House, with Trump scheduled to address the crowd at 1 p.m.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Newbold told those who planned to accompany them to treat the police and National Guard with respect because they are just doing their jobs.

“They are not our enemies. They are our friends,” he said.

After Trump’s speech, Newbold said they headed toward the Capitol, where Congress was scheduled to affirm President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. It took them about an hour to get there because of the size of the crowd, and after arriving they found a mob had already broken windows and forced its way into the House and Senate chambers and legislators’ offices.

What they found was “just mass chaos,” he said. “The cops were so completely overwhelmed they could not hold back the crowd.”

During the melee, one woman was fatally shot and 14 police officers were injured, two of whom were hospitalized.

Newbold said he and some of the others made their way to the one of the Capitol doorways, where they helped police to their feet and pulled out some the injured, but they did not go any farther.

Newbold said while most of those in attendance were American-loving “patriots,” he believes they were infiltrated by others whose goal was to incite the crowd to violence. He said they heard on their way to the Trump speech that members of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys were going around chanting “Storm the Capitol” and were leading a contingent to the Capitol.

Newbold hoped by marching on the nation’s Capitol some in Congress might “stand up” and oppose affirming Biden’s win, but that did not happen. He wonders whether the fallout from Wednesday will make it even harder to convince people what they believe is at stake.

“I don’t know where we go from here … I believe that our country is never again going to be what it was conceptually founded to be. We are headed toward a completely new America, if America will even continue to exist” as we know it, Newbold said.

Staff writers Nathanael Hawthorne and Tom Giambroni contributed to this report.