The crowd, much of it made up of Revolutionary Guards detailed to maintain order, pulled the coffin from the helicopter and began parading it around the makeshift compound surrounding the gravesite. As the excitement grew, the body of the Ayatollah, wrapped in a white burial shroud, fell out of the flimsy wooden coffin, and in a mad scene people in the crowd reached to touch the shroud. The soldiers pushed and wrestled, finally firing warning shots, to get the body back.