Butler, PA Shooting: Victims, Security Failures, and Reforms

The Butler, Pennsylvania shooting was the July 13, 2024 attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at an outdoor campaign rally, in which a 20-year-old gunman firing from an unsecured rooftop wounded Trump in the right ear, killed one spectator, and critically injured two others before Secret Service counter-snipers killed him. Federal investigators concluded the attack was preventable, blamed a cascade of Secret Service failures, and the agency’s director resigned within ten days.

What Happened That Evening

Trump took the stage at the Butler Farm Show grounds at roughly 6:02 p.m. EDT.¹ By that point, local officers had already flagged a young man as suspicious. They had photographed him more than an hour earlier near the American Glass Research (AGR) building, a commercial complex just outside the Secret Service’s secured perimeter, and watched him use a rangefinder.²

Around 6:08 p.m., police dash cameras captured the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, on the AGR roof. A local officer was hoisted up to the roofline, came face to face with Crooks, saw a rifle pointed at him, and dropped back down. Within roughly 25 to 30 seconds, Crooks opened fire.² He discharged as many as eight rounds from an AR-style rifle at a distance of roughly 150 to 300 yards from the stage.

A bullet struck Trump in the upper part of his right ear. Agents immediately shielded him behind the lectern. Spectator Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed while diving on top of his family. Two other attendees, David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74, were critically wounded.¹ Secret Service counter-snipers returned fire and killed Crooks on the rooftop.²

About a minute after the gunfire stopped, Trump stood up with blood on his face, pumped his fist to the crowd, and mouthed the word “fight” as agents walked him to a vehicle.¹ He was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital, received a CT scan, and was released the same evening. His wound was two centimeters wide; the bullet came less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head.³ The FBI later confirmed that what struck him was a bullet, whole or fragmented, from Crooks’s rifle.⁴

Who the Shooter Was

Thomas Matthew Crooks was 20 years old and lived in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles south of Butler. He had graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022, finished an associate’s degree in engineering science at the Community College of Allegheny County with high honors, was scheduled to enroll at Robert Morris University that fall, and worked as a dietary aide at a nursing facility.⁵⁶ He had no prior contact with the FBI and was not on any watchlist.⁷

His family had noticed changes in his behavior in the summer of 2024, including late-night pacing in his room, talking to himself, and online searches related to depression. His father reported a family history of mental health problems.⁶

On the day of the rally, Crooks told his parents he was heading to a shooting range, left around 1:30 p.m., visited the rally site, and flew a drone roughly 200 yards from the grounds to surveil the area.²⁸ His weapon was a DPMS Panther Arms A-15 rifle chambered in 5.56mm that his father had legally purchased roughly six months earlier.⁹⁵ He reached the AGR roof by climbing onto an air conditioning unit. Two improvised explosive devices were later found in the trunk of his car, both inactive and flawed in construction.

Digital records showed Crooks had registered for the rally by email, checked local hospital directions, reviewed weather conditions, and at one point searched “how far was Oswald from Kennedy.”¹⁰ The FBI officially closed the case in November 2025, concluding that he acted alone and identifying no motive. No manifesto was recovered.¹¹

The People Who Were Killed and Wounded

Corey Comperatore, 50, lived in Sarver, Pennsylvania. He was a father of two daughters, a longtime volunteer fire chief in Buffalo Township, and an engineer at a plastics manufacturing company in Butler.¹² He attended the rally with his wife Helen and was killed shielding his family from the gunfire.¹³ Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro ordered flags flown at half-staff. His sister, Kelly Comperatore Meeder, has publicly said no one from the federal government contacted the family in the year following the shooting, and the family has called the administrative suspensions issued to Secret Service personnel insufficient.¹⁴

David Dutch, 57, was shot in the chest and liver and placed in a medically induced coma. He was discharged from Allegheny General Hospital 11 days after the attack and as of July 2025 still carried bullet fragments in his abdomen that could not be removed.¹⁵ James Copenhaver, 74, suffered two gunshot wounds, one tearing into his triceps and the other lodging near his spine and damaging his colon. He was hospitalized for 15 days, has undergone multiple surgeries, walks with a cane because of nerve damage, and carries shrapnel in his pelvis that may be permanent.¹⁶

Both Dutch and Copenhaver filed federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against the United States government, alleging Secret Service negligence in security planning and threat response. Each family is seeking at least $150,000 in damages, and Copenhaver’s wife is also a plaintiff. The complaints rely heavily on findings from congressional investigations.¹⁷¹⁸

Why the Shooter Reached the Roof

Every major investigation reached the same core conclusion: the attack was preventable, and a chain of failures in planning, communication, and leadership allowed it to happen.

An Unguarded Building Outside the Perimeter

The AGR complex sat outside the Secret Service’s established security perimeter. The agency had deferred responsibility for the building to local law enforcement but never confirmed anyone was actually covering it. When Crooks climbed onto the roof, no federal, state, or local officer was watching it.¹⁹ Acting Director Ronald Rowe later testified he could not defend why the roof was unsecured, noting he had personally observed the clear line of sight from the rooftop to the stage.²⁰

Information That Never Reached the Stage

The Senate Homeland Security Committee identified lack of structured communication as the single greatest contributor to the failures. Local officers tracked Crooks as a suspicious person for more than an hour before the shooting, but that intelligence never reached the agents protecting Trump on stage. The security room agent responsible for relaying the information failed to do so, had no direct contact with local law enforcement, and had not reviewed the operations plans of the state or local agencies involved.²¹

The radios compounded the problem. The Secret Service, Pennsylvania State Police, Butler County Emergency Services Unit, Butler Township Police, and Butler County Sheriff’s Office all operated on different frequencies, with no unified command post and no invitation for local partners to join the Secret Service security room.¹⁹

Denied Resources, Inexperienced Agents

The Senate investigation found that Secret Service headquarters had denied or left unfulfilled at least ten requests from Trump’s protective detail for additional resources, including counter-sniper teams, Counter Assault Team assets, and drone-detection equipment.²² The agency’s counter-drone system at Butler was inoperable until 4:33 p.m. because of technical problems, after Crooks had already flown his own drone over the site. The agent assigned to the equipment lacked sufficient training and had to call a toll-free technical support line to troubleshoot it.⁸

The House task force found that agents with little to no experience in advance security planning had been given significant responsibilities for what was recognized as a higher-risk outdoor venue.²³ The Senate singled out the relatively inexperienced site agent assigned to lead security planning and faulted senior supervisors for not providing adequate oversight.²¹

Threat Intelligence Held Back

A Government Accountability Office investigation found that senior Secret Service officials were aware of a specific threat to Trump before the rally, but a “siloed practice for sharing classified threat information” meant the advance team and local law enforcement were never told.²⁴ The Senate investigation separately found that despite an elevated threat environment involving an Iran-linked plot against Trump, counter-snipers at Butler were not briefed on the specific intelligence.²²

What the Investigations Concluded

Three major investigations examined the shooting. A bipartisan House task force led by Representatives Mike Kelly and Jason Crow conducted 46 transcribed interviews, reviewed roughly 18,000 pages of documents, and released its final report on December 10, 2024, concluding the assassination attempt was “preventable and should not have happened.” It issued 25 recommendations specific to the Butler failures and 11 broader recommendations for agency reform.²³

The Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Senator Rand Paul, conducted 17 transcribed interviews and reviewed over 75,000 pages of documents. Its final report, released on July 13, 2025, described a “cascade of preventable failures” and called the disciplinary actions taken against Secret Service personnel “far too weak to match the severity of the failures.”²⁵ The report also found that former Director Kimberly Cheatle had provided false testimony to Congress when she stated that no security asset requests for the Butler rally had been denied. No criminal referral for perjury has been publicly reported.²²

The Government Accountability Office issued its report in July 2025, identifying policy gaps in how the Secret Service staffed security rooms, shared threat intelligence internally, and allocated resources. It issued eight recommendations, all of which the Department of Homeland Security concurred with.²⁴

Accountability and Reforms

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified for six hours before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on July 22, 2024. Lawmakers from both parties criticized her refusal to answer specific questions, and Chairman James Comer and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin jointly called for her resignation. She resigned the following day, writing that she took “full responsibility for the security lapse” and calling Butler “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.”²⁶ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appointed Deputy Director Ronald Rowe as acting director.²⁷

Six Secret Service personnel received suspensions of 10 to 42 days without pay, with all placed on restricted duty or moved to non-operational positions. The penalties included a 42-day suspension for the site agent for negligence, plus a separate 1-day suspension for failure to follow policy and a reassignment; 14-day suspensions for the site counterpart, the special agent in charge in Pittsburgh, and the lead agent in Pittsburgh; a 35-day suspension and restricted duty for a uniformed division team leader; and a 10-day suspension and restricted duty for an assistant to the special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.²¹ No one was fired. The security room agent who failed to relay critical information about the gunman was not disciplined, because the agency determined he had not violated policy, and he retired in June 2025.²²

Sean Curran became Secret Service Director and has overseen a restructuring effort organized around five pillars: operations, human capital, resources, training, and technology. As of July 2025, the agency reported implementing 21 of 46 congressional recommendations, with 16 more in progress. Key changes include a new Aviation and Airspace Security division for aerial monitoring and drone operations, a revised Protective Operations Manual clarifying roles and staffing requirements, new protocols for coordinating with local law enforcement including mandatory pre-event meetings, and a fleet of mobile command vehicles for regional field offices.²⁸

Congress acted legislatively as well. The Enhanced Presidential Security Act of 2024 (H.R. 9106), sponsored by Representative Michael Lawler and signed into law on October 1, 2024, requires the Secret Service to apply the same security standards to major presidential and vice-presidential candidates that it applies to the president and vice president. The bill passed the House 405–0 and cleared the Senate by unanimous consent.²⁹

1
PBS NewsHour. A Timeline of How the Attempted Assassination of Former President Trump Unfolded
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ABC News. A Timeline of How the Trump Assassination Attempt Unfolded at a Rally in Pennsylvania
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Politico. Trump Shooting Doctor Letter
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Time. Trump Ear Injury Shooting Details
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NPR. Who Was Trump Rally Shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks
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The New York Times. Thomas Crooks, Trump Shooter, Butler Rally
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FBI. Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
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U.S. Senate HSGAC. Senate Committee Print on USSS Failures at Butler Rally
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FBI. Butler Investigation Photos
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NPR. Corey Comperatore, Man Killed in Trump Assassination Attempt
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BBC. Corey Comperatore
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ABC News. Man Shot and Injured at Pennsylvania Trump Rally Released From Hospital
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CBS News Pittsburgh. Trump Assassination Attempt One Year Later Victims Recount Shooting
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Politico. Trump Butler Shooting Lawsuit
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CBS News Pittsburgh. Men Shot During Butler Trump Rally Sue United States
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City & State PA. Key Findings From the Trump Assassination Attempt in Butler
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U.S. Senate. Senate Hearing on USSS Failures at Butler
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The Washington Post. Trump Assassination Attempt Senate Investigation
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U.S. Senate HSGAC. USSS Chairman Report Final
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U.S. House Task Force. Final Report of Findings and Recommendations
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U.S. Senate (Grassley). GAO Report on USSS Failures at Butler Rally
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U.S. Senate HSGAC. Chairman Rand Paul Releases Final Report Detailing Secret Service Failures
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BBC. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Resigns
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CNBC. Secret Service Director Resigns After Trump Shooting
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U.S. Secret Service. One Year Update Following July 13 2024 Attempted Assassination
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U.S. Congress. H.R. 9106 – Enhanced Presidential Security Act of 2024