The two men who were shot and wounded in Butler, Pa., when a would-be assassin began shooting at President Donald Trump blame Secret Service negligence for the attack, the pair said on NBC News Monday evening, in their first public interview since the event.
Jim Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57, were critically wounded when gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at the July 13 campaign rally in Pennsylvania. The two men were sitting in the bleachers behind Trump, who was shot in the ear, and near fireman Corey Comperatore, 50, who was killed while shielding his family from the gunfire. Both men blamed Secret Service’s negligence for the shooting, they told NBC.
“I believe there was 100 percent negligence on the Secret Service, probably everybody involved in setting that security, down to inter-department communications,” Dutch said. “The negligence was vast. It was terrible.”
“I’m sure there was negligence. It wouldn’t have happened, had it been secure,” Copenhaver said.
The security was “poor,” Dutch added. Copenhaver was shot in his arm and abdomen, and Dutch was hit in the liver.
“I turned around to my friend, and I said, ‘I think I was shot,’ and that’s when I got the second one, and then I went down,” Copenhaver said. “It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in the chest,” Dutch said.
Both men are still recovering from the wounds. Copenhaver has lost weight, still has pain in his abdomen, and now walks with a cane. Dutch also lost weight, can’t drive by himself, and can’t lift more than ten pounds.
“It’s a struggle every day,” Dutch said.
Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle resigned after the rally, which Secret Service was widely blamed for having mishandled. A number of security breaches and mishaps allowed Crooks to remain at-large in the hours before Trump was scheduled to take the stage, even though he had been repeatedly flagged as suspicious by multiple law enforcement officers. Crooks fired eight shots, missing Trump, his intended target, but killing Comperatore and wounding Copenhaver and Dutch before he was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Attorneys for the victims intend to file lawsuits and are investigating “whom they will pursue a case against,” NBC reported.
Secret Service officers stopped a second assassination attempt on Trump’s life in West Palm Beach at the president’s golf club in September, when they found and arrested Ryan Routh. Apparently planning to shoot Trump, Routh, dressed in body armor, hid with a gun for nearly twelve hours in the bushes at the edge of the famous golf course.