Butler, Pa. is still taking people. James Copenhaver died Wednesday at 76, two years after he went to hear Donald Trump speak. The country called him a survivor. He spent the last two years living with wounds that never really closed.
He was in the bleachers on July 13, 2024. Thomas Crooks fired from a roof that should’ve been covered. Corey Comperatore died that afternoon. David Dutch was hit. Trump was grazed. Copenhaver got the long damage: hospitals, operations, and pain that followed him home.
America treated Butler like a campaign image and a finished ordeal. Copenhaver lived with that damage for two years. He was a grandfather from Coraopolis who paid for the failure of the U.S. Secret Service with the rest of his life.
Never whitewash what happened. It was a security collapse. It was willful negligence.
Remember James Copenhaver. Pray for his widow, Marianne, and her family. Don’t talk about that day in Butler as if everyone who lived walked away whole. They didn’t. He didn’t. America didn’t. Rest in peace, James Copenhaver.