Fifty-year-old Corey Comperatore has been identified as the innocent bystander who was killed during an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
Members of Comperatore’s family took to social media to remember their loved one, including his daughter, Allyson Comperatore, who said her father threw her and her mother to the ground and shielded them with his body when the shots rang out.
“He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us. And I want nothing more than to cry on him and tell him thank you. I want nothing more than to wake up and for this to not be reality for me and my family,” she wrote on Facebook.
Comperatore was the former fire chief of Buffalo Township in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Trump was addressing a crowd at a campaign rally when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired several shots with a rifle, killing Comperatore and wounding Trump, and critically injuring two other bystanders.
“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 wife and girls just lived through the unthinkable and unimaginable. My baby brother just turned 50 and had so much life left to experience,” wrote Comperatore’s sister, Dawn Comperatore Schafer.
“Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds. Pray for my sister-in-law, nieces, my mother, sister, me and his nieces and nephews as this feels like a terrible nightmare but we know it is our painful reality,” she added.
Fox News reported that Comperatore was likely the bystander who witnesses said was shot in the head.
“We lost a fellow Pennsylvanian last night,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro during a press conference on Sunday, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Corey Comperatore was a girl dad. Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community, and most especially Corey loves his family. Corey was an avid supporter of the former president and was so excited to be there last night with him in the community.”