The incident on August 4, 2018, unfolded in overlapping confusion. Amateur video captured one of the drones exploding in midair above the assembled National Guard troops, injuring seven or eight officers who were standing in formation. A separate video, recorded by Telemundo cameraman Cesar Saavedra, showed the second drone striking the Don Eduardo apartment building, its windows billowing smoke. A woman in the building reported that a girl inside was injured when the drone crashed through a window. Maduro, his wife Cilia Flores, and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez left the scene unharmed. Within minutes, National Guard soldiers detained journalists from VIVOplay and TVVenezuela, preventing independent reporting from the area. The Venezuelan government's Interior Minister Nestor Reverol later stated that the two drones carried a combined load of C4 plastic explosive, one intended to detonate above Maduro's head and the other directly in front of him.

Maduro moved quickly. In a televised address two hours after the incident, he announced that suspects had already been apprehended. He blamed right-wing elements within Venezuela acting in concert with the Colombian government, naming outgoing Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos as a co-conspirator. Santos denied the accusation. Over the following days, the story expanded. Maduro claimed the perpetrators had trained in Chinacota, in Colombia's Norte de Santander department. He accused Venezuelan opposition leaders Julio Borges and Juan Requesens of orchestrating the attack, presenting a partially censored video of former security official Juan Carlos Monasterios claiming Requesens had told him "to kill the President." By the end of the week, Maduro alleged that everyone involved had been offered fifty million dollars and United States citizenship. The charges grew in scope and specificity, but independent verification remained impossible -- journalists had been excluded from the scene, and the evidence was released exclusively through government channels.

The arrest of opposition lawmaker Juan Requesens drew the sharpest condemnation. Under Article 200 of Venezuela's constitution, only the Supreme Tribunal, with authorization from the National Assembly, has the power to arrest a sitting legislator. No such authorization was obtained. On August 10, Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez presented videos of Requesens naming several suspects, though Requesens described only helping someone travel from Venezuela to Colombia -- he gave no details of any attack. The opposition said Requesens had been drugged and tortured into making false statements. Sources within his Justice First party described escalating coercion: when initial drugging failed to produce useful confessions, they said, his captors continued until he became incontinent, while threatening to harm his family. A second video showed Requesens in stained underwear. Venezuelans protested by demonstrating publicly in their own underwear in solidarity. Requesens was denied bail on August 14 and charged with seven crimes carrying up to thirty years in prison.

The incident's basic facts remain in dispute. The Venezuelan government maintained it was a targeted assassination attempt using drone-delivered explosives. But multiple analysts and observers challenged this narrative. International Crisis Group consultant Phil Gunson described the official investigation as beginning "with the conclusions and work backwards." The initial report from the scene, via the Associated Press, attributed the explosion to a gas tank in the Don Eduardo apartment building, not a drone. An independent investigation by the NGO Control Ciudadano concluded that the building explosion was coincidental. Former Venezuelan military aide Anthony Daquin noted that the area was a designated no-fly zone, suggesting any drones present would have been government-operated. Some opposition figures called the entire event a false flag operation staged to justify the crackdown that followed. Whether the drones were a genuine assassination attempt, an opportunistic pretext, or something else entirely, the consequences were concrete: dozens arrested, constitutional protections overridden, another opposition lawmaker -- Fernando Alban -- dead in government custody two months later under circumstances initially called suicide by the state, though Venezuela's own attorney general admitted in 2021 that Alban was killed by two SEBIN officers.