LISTEN: Update on victims of the Pennsylvania rally shooting
Jul 15, 2024, 12:08 PM | Updated: 1:48 pm
Attendees scatter after gunfire rang out during a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump at Butler Farm Show Inc. on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
(Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
BUTLER, Pa. — A bystander was killed, former President Donald Trump was wounded, and two people were injured when a man opened fire at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
We spoke with News Nation correspondent Brian Entin, who reported from Pennsylvania with the latest on the victims.
The podcast and full transcript are below.
UTAH’S NOON NEWS HOST MARIA SHILAOS: “This weekend’s attempted assassination in Pennsylvania sent two people to the hospital and killed a third, a man who died trying to shield his family from the bullets. Joining me live from Pennsylvania News Nation correspondent Brian Enten.
Tell us about the man who was killed. What do we know about him?
NEWS NATION CORRESPONDENT BRIAN ENTIN: Yeah, it’s just tragic. We’re out here in Pennsylvania right now. We’ve been talking to his friends and neighbors. His name is Corey Comperatore, 50-year-old man from this area.
He had been on the volunteer fire department here for 30 years since 1994. His day job was at a plastic manufacturing facility. But his co-workers were telling us he would often come to work smelling like smoke because he would go to work and then he would leave to go fight fires with the Volunteer Fire Company. And then he come back to work.
[He was] already known as a hero in this community for fighting the fires. You’ve had a car accident? [He’d] help people get out of cars when they were trapped. He was married to his high school sweetheart. He had two daughters. He was a girl- dad. And he was at the rally with his wife and his two daughters on Saturday.
And the moment he heard the first gunshot he dove on top of his family, on top of his two kids and his wife shielding them from the gunfire. But sadly he took a fatal shot. They tried to save him out there. There were some doctors on the scene. But it was just too late.
SHILAOS: Do you know where he or the others were located compared to the former president?
ENTIN: We’re told they were sitting in the stands behind the president to the side quite a bit to the side, which has led some here to speculate … that the gunman … may have just started shooting more sporadically because it wasn’t like he was aiming at the President when Corey was shot. He wasn’t sitting directly behind the former president.
SHILAOS: Any update on the other people who were wounded?
ENTIN: Yeah, so the other two are in the hospital still, they’re in stable condition. I spoke to several of their neighbors also.
I mean, it’s a small town. Everybody sort of knows everybody. A lot of people were at the rally. So you know, it’s interesting, it’s become such a national story, obviously, the attempted assassination of a former president. But here in this part of Pennsylvania and Butler, Pennsylvania, they’re in grief. I mean everybody knew Corey, and a lot of people knew the other two people who are in the hospital still.
So many people were at the rally … they’re all sort of still coping with it.”
