The person who was shot and killed at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday was a 50-year-old firefighter who was protecting his family when gunfire rang out, state Gov. Josh Shapiro said Sunday.
The victim was identified as Corey Comperatore, as his family posted on Facebook. The PA Trump Rally took the life of my brother, Corey Comperatore. Hating a man costs the life of the man we love the most, the victim’s sister said in a post on Sunday. Comperatore previously served as chief of Buffalo Township’s volunteer fire department, according to a report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Shapiro said he spoke to Comperatore’s family and relayed parts of the conversation to reporters. Corey died a hero. Corey threw himself and his family to protect them last night at the party, Shapiro said. Corey is the best of us.
Comperatore has a wife and two daughters. Corey is the girl’s father, Shapiro said.
Shapiro added: Corey was a firefighter. Corey goes to church every Sunday. Corey loved his country and especially Corey loved his family. Shapiro described the victim as a supporter of the former president.
Trump had just begun his speech at a rally in Pennsylvania when shots rang out and Trump was also injured when a bullet hit his right ear. The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as a suspect in what the government is calling an assassination attempt on Trump.
Israel said today that Hamas commander Rafa Salama, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war, was killed in a bombing.
A military statement said the Israeli air force hit and killed the commander of the Hamas Khan Younis Brigade, Rafa Salama, in yesterday’s attack in the southern Gaza Strip. The attack targeted Mohammed Deif, a Palestinian militant leader, the military said earlier.
A Hamas official said Sunday that Deif was still alive and working. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also admitted that there is no evidence that Deif was killed.
According to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, 92 people were killed and more than 300 injured in the attack in the Al-Mawasi camp where tens of thousands of Palestinians fled. The soldiers said that their shelling on Saturday targeted Deif and Salama in a space that was not a tent camp, but was working.
Sunday’s military statement described Salama as one of Deif’s closest associates and one of the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel. According to the report, Salama joined Hamas in the early 1990s, became a battalion commander and played a significant role in the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006. Shalit was released in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. He became commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade in 2016 and was responsible for launching rockets into Israel in two offensive tunnels, the military said.
The October 7 attack killed 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report from the Israeli census. Israeli military retaliation has killed at least 38,584 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
