One year ago, then former President Donald Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The tragic event, which resulted in the death of a rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, transformed the 2024 presidential race, with Trump’s defiant response sealing his reputation as America’s fighter. In Butler, there are still little in the way of answers. This Washington Examiner series will investigate where things stand one year on, look at Secret Service reforms and the rise in political violence in the U.S. Salena Zito, who was in the crowd on that day, revisits Butler in the first part of this series.
BUTLER — It has been one year since Thomas Matthew Crooks asked his father if he could borrow his rifle to go to the shooting range and left his home in the middle-class Bethel Park suburb heading here to this Butler County farm field to never come home.
It wasn’t unusual for the 20-year-old to go to the shooting range or borrow his father’s gun for target shooting, so the request went without a second thought; in fact, he had been to the shooting club and practiced on the rifle range the day before.
He asked his nursing home employer, where he worked as a dietary aide, for the day off, assuring them he would be back the next day. He bought 50 rounds of ammo, and then found a parking spot less than a mile from the rally and began to walk towards the farm show complex.
A local Pittsburgh television caught him on film walking back and forth at the perimeter of the event just over an hour before he fired his first shots.
He was spotted minutes before the shooting on top of the roof of an out building—rally attendees spotted him and desperately tried to alert the Secret Service while a Butler Township officer attempted to stop him when he himself climbed the same roof as Crooks who pointed his gun directly at the officer.
The officer retreated. Crooks began firing at the crowd and at then former President Donald Trump, who as fate would have it, had turned his head to face a chart; a chart that was rarely used, and if it was used, it was on his other side and towards the end of a rally.
Crooks would hit the President in the ear, mortally wound local retired fire chief Corey Comperatore, a father of two daughters, and wife of Helen, and gravely injured two others in the crowd: Jim Copenhaver and David Dutch.
26 seconds later, after firing those shots, Crooks was dead, shot in the head by a Secret Service sniper. Trump, meanwhile, was able to gather himself and rise to his feet, pumping his fist and chanting “fight, fight” with blood streaming down his face. The incident and iconic images all but sealed his return to the presidency, regardless of whether he was set to face former President Joe Biden or his eventual opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in November.
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One year later, walking around the grounds of the Butler Farm Show grounds, little has changed, although the stage which Trump spoke on is now a building.
Little is still known about Crooks and his motives, although a CBS News investigation published this week showed his descent into secrecy began in the fall of 2023 when he started using Mailfence, which is an encrypted email service, and Mullvad, a VPN service that effectively makes online activity covert.
It also showed that he was interested in things fairly common for a 20-year-old in western Pennsylvania, such as news updates on the Pittsburgh Steelers.
According to the Congressional Task Force on the Trump Assassination Attempt, Crooks’s father said in hindsight that the signs of his son’s mental health decay began six months before July 13, 2024.
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An investigator wrote: “Crooks’ father explained that within the last year he observed several instances of his son dancing in his bedroom throughout the night. He would occasionally see Crooks talking to himself with his hands moving, which he expressed as uncommon and had become more prevalent after he had finished his last semester.”
In the Bethel Park neighborhood where Crooks’ mother and father live, and where he was raised, the home has multiple security cameras but very little signs of life despite numerous visits to the neighborhood.
They have a lawyer, and neither is answering questions.
Both parents allowed their social work licenses to expire a couple of months ago; his mother, Mary, submitted her resignation from her lifelong job in February. It is clear she left because of the shooting.
“Certain circumstances have left me with no other option than to vacate a position I have been proud to hold for the past 27 years,” she wrote in the resignation letter originally obtained by the New York Times.
Helen Comperatore says she remains stuck in that moment when her husband, Corey, her childhood sweetheart, was taken from her. They met in kindergarten, dated in high school, and were married at 21. Within weeks, one of her daughters will be getting married.
Today, she will be holding a private memorial service for Corey.
“Corey should be here,” she told the Washington Examiner through tears while sitting at a picnic bench not far from her Sarver home.
Of Crooks, that day, and the failings of the Secret Service haunt her.
“They failed my husband miserably, and I want answers from this,” she said.
One year later, several agents have been suspended, a decision announced this week, but she wants more information. In talking with the people of Butler, people who attended the rally and the suburban neighborhood of Bethel Park, that sentiment is shared.
On Trump, she says she knows he will make sure that things that went wrong that day won’t happen again.
“I still worry about him because of this, he is the most compassionate man I’ve met, but one year later I still worry about him every day.”