The family of the firefighter killed at former President Donald Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally last month spoke out about what happened on July 13, when a gunman tried to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee.
Speaking to Pittsburgh's Action News 4, Helen Comperatore recalled how her husband, Corey, joked that day about how Trump would call him up to the stage.
"All day at the rally, my husband kept kept saying, 'He's going to call me up on stage, you're going to hear him, he's going to say Corey, get up here.' He was just joking, obviously, but he kept saying that — 'He's going to call me up on stage.'”
That’s why the moment Trump honored Comperatore at the Republican National Convention was such an “honor.”
“We were all like, there's his moment. He's up on stage. He got his moment on stage,” she said.
RIP Corey Comperatore🙏 pic.twitter.com/J2lrr0Mm8u
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2024
Comperatore died a hero that day as he instructed his wife and two daughters, Allyson and Kaylee, to get down when shots rang out, throwing his body over them to protect them.
"I was the one that my dad threw down. As he was throwing me down, that was when he was shot and he ended up falling onto me," Allyson said. "I don't remember hearing any other shots. I don't remember feeling any other shots. In that moment, I was trying to take care of him.
"I was really confused when he was on me. I had turned around, and I went, 'Dad,' and when I turned is whenever he fell down, and that's when I started screaming and instantly I was trying to keep him from bleeding."
Kaylee recalled what went through her mind after her father was shot.
"I started screaming, but in my head, I kept saying, 'Wake up,' like this is a dream," Kaylee said. "And then you realize it's not a dream, and you feel like your whole world is just over."
Helen said she hopes the world will remember her husband not as the person killed at the rally but for who he was.
"He was just a wonderful man,” she said. "Just try to remember Corey as, he was a great man that was a great father. He was a great husband.”
And she’s determined to get to the bottom of what happened that day in Butler.
"I want justice for my husband, and I'm going to get it," she said, explaining she hired an attorney to get answers about the security failures at the rally.
"I just want them to know that I really think my dad's blood is on their hands, and I hope they wake up every day thinking about what they took from our family," Kaylee said. "Because we have to wake up every day and see that image of our father in our head, and no child should ever have to see that."