Quiet Western Pennsylvania Town Blinded by Media Spotlight after Shocking Presidential Assassination Attempt

Butler, Pa. — A peaceful town in western Pennsylvania became the locus of national media attention after an attempt on the life of a former president. For residents of Butler, Pennsylvania, life goes on, albeit with the disquieting presence of reporters and a steady drumbeat of barstool discussion about how, exactly, this could have happened.

At a roadside bar on Monday afternoon, the only topic of conversation to be found was the rally two days before. Even so, a bartender named Anna told National Review that things had been “the same” since then.

“Everyone who’s come in here has talked about it,” she said. “I even talked to one guy who was there, who saw the shooter, but stuff has been normal. I’ve been working. There have been a bunch of reporters around, which is weird.”

Butler, about an hour outside Pittsburgh, was once a hub of industry, home to the now-defunct Standard Steel Company and American Austin Car Company. Its population peaked at 24,477 in 1940 and had shrunk to 13,502 by 2020.

Butler has one elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, with two elementary schools having closed in 2015 and another middle school shuttering in 2022. Like many Rust-Belt cities that once boasted thriving centers of manufacturing, its poverty rate — 21.7 percent — sits above the national average of 11.5 percent.

The people who spoke with NR at the roadside bar worked a variety of jobs. One man remodels homes, another breaks horses. A man named Mike, who attended the rally, makes his living as an HVAC repairman.

For some of the residents, the presence of reporters has been more than just “weird.” Mike told NR he did not appreciate mainstream journalists parachuting into his town, especially after it had been the site of an attempted assassination of a former president, the killing of volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, and nonfatal gunshot wounds to two others.

Referencing a reporter for a large national newspaper who had just left the bar, Mike said he could “tell she was a journalist because she was wearing fancy clothes.” While he and others who spoke with NR obviously understood why their town had received such attention, it wasn’t necessarily welcome.

Mike talked about his experience in the minutes, hours, and days since the shooting. He lives on Eagle Mill Road, only a few minutes away from the site of the rally.

“I was there, and I saw a guy on that roof and heard someone yell that there was a shooter,” Mike told NR. “Then we heard the shots and I dropped down and in all the chaos I cut my knees, but a buddy of mine who was near Trump said there was blood all over the bleachers.”

He said the fact that “the guy was able to get up there” was “the weirdest thing.”

“I feel like if you walked through there with a rake on your shoulder you’d get tackled by Secret Service,” Mike said.

Also shocked by both the assassination attempt and the disruption it caused to her life was Kelly Little, a woman who lives across the street from the family of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks in Bethel Park, a suburb of Pittsburgh about an hour away from Butler.

Little had never really spoken with the family, she told the crowd of reporters swarming her front patio, aside from a casual wave every now and then.

“There are people in the neighborhood who I know, who I talk to, but I had no interactions ever with them,” Little told NR.

She explained how, soon after the shooting, she was evacuated from her home as law enforcement conducted a sweep of the area.

“We were evacuated Saturday night when they found out who the shooter was, and there were police blocking off the street,” Little said. “Eventually, a sergeant with the police said he’d call us when we were able to come back over. I honestly couldn’t tell you when I learned about it, because I was driving, but I saw the texts come in and then learned it was my neighbor when I tried to get back to my house.”

Holding court outside her house, Little told NR it has been “strange” to have national media flock to her street.

Not all the residents of Crooks’s street were interested in talking. As residents returning from hotels drove onto their block, many avoided the army of reporters and videographers attempting to glean just a little more information about the shooter.

One man, who answered the door with a black dog in his arms, told NR he had no desire to have reporters come knocking.

“I just want to watch TV, man,” he said.