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The 50-year-old father and retired fire chief killed at Donald Trump’s rally Saturday made his final post on X just hours before he was shot dead.
“Trump rally! Butler, PA,” Corey Comperatore wrote on X in response to a question about users’ weekend plans.
Comperatore died at Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a nearby rooftop in an assassination attempt against the former president. The 20-year-old was killed by Secret Service agents soon after opening fire.
Comperatore died after throwing his body over his wife and daughter to protect them from Crooks’ gunfire.
“He loved his family,” his daughter, Allyson Comperatore, wrote in a now-deleted social media post. “He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us.”
The 50-year-old is survived by his wife and two daughters. Comperatore was a recently retired fire chief, local outlet WPXI reported. He was also a project and tooling engineer at the JSP company and lived in Sarver, Pennsylvania, according to his social media profiles.
“The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we loved the most. He was a hero that shielded his daughters,” his sister, Dawn Comperatore Schafer, wrote on Facebook. “His wife and girls just lived through the unthinkable and unimaginable.”
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro commended his heroism over the weekend.
“Corey died a hero,” Shapiro said. “Corey dived on his family to protect them last night. Corey was the very best of us.”
Two other attendees were also critically injured: 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver, both from Pennsylvania.
Dutch is in a medically induced coma after he was shot in the liver and chest. Meanwhile, while Copenhaver’s condition is unclear, but one friend told the New York Times he is hopeful about his prognosis. They were both listed in stable condition as of Monday.
Trump, who was struck in the ear by a bullet before diving behind his podium, said his survival was a “miracle.”
“I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead,” Trump told the New York Post. “I’m supposed to be dead.”
The former president said the attempt on his life inspired him to change his speech at the Republican National Convention, where he will become the official GOP nominee and name his running mate.
“I had all prepared an extremely tough speech, really good, all about the corrupt, horrible administration,” Trump said. “But I threw it away.”
“I want to try to unite our country,” he continued.
President Joe Biden made a similar plea in a rare oval office address on Sunday night.
“I want to speak tonight about the need to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember, though we may disagree, we are not enemies,” Biden said.
