He pushed his daughter and wife to the ground, shielding them from the gunfire that was coming towards them. Donald Trump. Corey Comperatoreformer fire chief, had just turned 50 and yesterday afternoon was among the thousands of people crowding the stands around the stage where the former tycoon was closing his election campaign. One of the shots fired by the twenty-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks hit him squarely, making him collapse to the ground in a pool of blood. “He died a hero, just as he had lived,” were the words of the family who today wanted to remember him on social networks. Along with him, two other spectators – whose identities are not yet known – suffered some injuries during the attack and are now hospitalized in serious conditions.
A former firefighter in Buffalo Township, Butler County, Corey Comperatore was sitting directly behind Trump when Crooks fired shots. He immediately threw himself on his daughter and wife, who were also in the stands next to him. “I saw a man fall to the back of the stands after being shot in the back of the head,” said a doctor who was at the rally, a few meters from Comperatore. “Trump’s rally took my brother’s life,” his sister Dawn wrote on Facebook. “Hate for one man took the life of the man we all loved the most. He was a hero who protected his daughters. His wife and girls experienced the unthinkable and unimaginable. My little brother had just turned 50 and still had a lot of life to live.”
Heartbreaking too the memory of his daughter, Allyson. “Yesterday, time stopped,” she said, “and when it started again, we entered a nightmare.” “He was the best father a daughter could ask for,” she added. “The media won’t tell you that a real superhero died. They won’t tell you how quickly he pushed me and my mother to the ground. They won’t tell you that he protected my body from the bullets that were coming toward us.” “Dad,” Allyson concluded, “I love you so much that there are no words to express how deep my love is.” In the coming days, flags across Pennsylvania will be flown at half-mast to remember the hero firefighter, as announced by Democratic governor Josh Shapiro himself, who called on all political leaders to “lower the temperature and overcome the rhetoric of hate.”