Booth leaped to the stage and pushed Keene aside as he ran towards a back exit, dagger in hand. Eyewitness Thomas Sherman, who climbed onto the stage, described Miss Keene as "the only cool person there." She entreated the audience "for God's sake, gentlemen, be quiet; keep cool," as she helped a man up over the side of the presidential box and sent for a pitcher of water. (BRYAN 210)

Actor E.A. Emerson, who shared the stage with Keene that night, recalled that she "was one of the first to reach the box, and when I saw her she was holding the president's head in her lap and the handsome yellow satin dress she wore in her part was stained all down the front with his blood." Clara Harris maintained that "Laura Keene did not enter the box from first to last." Dr. Leale, the first physician to reach Lincoln, did not mention Keene in his early accounts but in a 1909 lecture he described her request to hold the president's head in her lap. (BRIGGS; LEALE)

Seaton Munroe, a Washington attorney who hurried to Ford's Theatre after the shooting, encountered Laura Keene at the foot of the staircase leading from the presidential box:

Making a motion to arrest her progress, I begged her to tell me if Mr. Lincoln was still alive. "God only knows!" she gasped, stopping for a moment's rest. The memory of that apparition will never leave me. Attired, as I had so often seen her, in the costume of her part in "Our American Cousin", her hair and dress were in disorder, and not only was her gown soaked in Lincoln's blood, but her hands, and even her cheeks where her fingers had strayed, were bedaubed with the sorry stains! (MUNROE 425)