The Attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania

The story so far

As of September 25, 2026

James Copenhaver has died at 76, two years after he was shot at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was hit in the arm and abdomen, underwent multiple surgeries including a partial removal of his colon, and lived with lasting nerve and organ damage and bullet fragments. He died Wednesday at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh. His death makes the Butler shooting the second fatality among attendees, alongside Corey Comperatore, who was killed that day.

The shooting happened at the Butler Farm Show grounds when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed a nearby roof and fired toward the stage. Trump was grazed in the right ear. Copenhaver and another attendee, David Dutch, were critically wounded. A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks at the scene.

The attack exposed failures in event security that now frame the story. Then–Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned within two weeks, six agents were suspended without pay, and a bipartisan House task force concluded the attempt was preventable, citing breakdowns in planning, execution, and leadership. The department’s inspector general later found the Secret Service missed 102 radio alerts flagging Crooks’ suspicious behavior before the shots. Rep. Carlos Gimenez climbed the same roof afterward, showing how easily it could be scaled despite earlier explanations about its slope.

Copenhaver’s death sharpens what is at stake: not only how a gunman reached a firing position at a presidential rally, but the full human cost of the lapses that followed. Earlier this year, Copenhaver and his wife sued the United States in federal court in Pittsburgh, alleging negligence by the Secret Service and Homeland Security and detailing the surgeries and permanent injuries he carried; the case seeks more than $150,000 and remains pending. The missed warnings and unsecured vantage point are the facts that tie the resignations, suspensions, and preventable finding together. With a second life now lost, the question is less whether there were failures than how far they ran and what will change.