Thomas Matthew Crooks shoots and nearly kills Trump at Butler Pennsylvania rally

On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, fires eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from the rooftop of a nearby building at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. A bullet grazes Trump's upper right ear; Trump raises his fist and shouts "Fight! Fight! Fight!" as Secret Service agents surround him. The shooting kills one audience member, Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief who was shielding his family. Two other attendees, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, are critically wounded. Crooks is killed four seconds after he begins firing by a Secret Service Counter Sniper Team agent. Crooks had scouted the venue days before the rally; FBI records show he searched "how far was Oswald from Kennedy" on July 6. The FBI determines Crooks had no clear ideological motive. He had donated $15 to a liberal PAC in 2022 and registered as a Republican. The attack exposes severe failures in Secret Service perimeter security; Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigns on July 22, 2024. The Butler shooting is the first near-assassination of a major-party presidential candidate since Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 shooting.