Vigil in honor of Corey Comperatore, who was killed in Trump’s assassination attempt

Now they flocked in their hundreds to the first of two vigils before the private funeral on Friday. His coffin stood inside.

Comperatore, who celebrated his 50th birthday last month, spent his life in this working-class community along the Allegheny River. He graduated from Freeport High School, home of the Yellowjackets, and married former classmate Helen. Together they raised two daughters.

“The epitome of a family man and the best father to girls,” his obituary read.

For nearly three decades, he worked at a plastics factory in the wooded hills of Butler County, rising from maintenance supervisor to project engineer. In his spare time, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve and as a volunteer firefighter – “the first one to run into a burning building,” recalled Buffalo Township Fire Chief Kip Johnston.

His Christian faith determined his life, the obituary said. Every Sunday, Comperatore attended church services at Cabot Church. Afterwards, he probably went hunting, fishing or walking his two Dobermans, said his brother Steve Warheit.

MAGA politics was his other passion. He loved Trump, Warheit said, and was thrilled to attend Saturday’s rally. Minutes after Trump’s campaign speech, gunfire shattered that joy. Comperatore threw himself on his wife and daughters, Helen told Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), and died trying to protect them.

“Corey was the very best of us,” Shapiro said this week at a news conference near the Butler Farm Show, a rural venue known for tractor-pulling contests and funnel cakes before the attack.

The gunman – who was shot at the scene – was a 20-year-old man who had traveled from a nearby Pittsburgh suburb. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican, had climbed to the roof of the American Glass Research building outside the rally’s security perch and crouched on the slanted roof with an AR-style rifle. He fired eight shots, authorities said, killing Comperatore, seriously wounding two other spectators and injuring Trump’s right ear.

Three days later, Trump called Comperatore’s widow to check on her, she wrote on Facebook. (Biden was the first head of state to call, she told the New York Post, but she declined to speak to him because her husband’s political views.)

“He was very kind,” she wrote of Trump, “and said he would continue to call me in the days and weeks to come.”

In this part of western Pennsylvania – a Republican stronghold dotted with American flags and Trump signs – mourners gathered in churches, restaurants and backyards all week. On Wednesday night, they gathered for a candlelight vigil at Lernerville Speedway, a dirt track near Comperatore’s birthplace. Despite the rain, hundreds sat in the damp bleachers, clutching votive candles or lighting their Cell phones.

“This is not a political event,” organizer Kelly McCollough told the crowd. “There is no place for hate here.”

Marissa Timko, a 25-year-old veterinary technician wearing a Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department hoodie, nodded in agreement.

She had gone to high school with Comperatore’s daughter, Kaylee, and both had been cheerleaders. One time, after a football game, a few of the girls needed a ride home, so Kaylee called her father.

Timko said she’ll never forget it: Comperatore drove up in his blue Ford pickup truck, ready to play chauffeur – even though the cheerleaders lived in the opposite direction.

“He would do anything for his daughters,” she said.

Did they listen to country music that night? Christian rock? Timko couldn’t remember, but Kaylee had once told her that Comperatore’s favorite song was “I Can Only Imagine,” a sentimental song by MercyMe about the path to heaven. When she heard the news, she ordered glass art for her old friend with these lyrics:

I will dance for you, Jesus

Or be silent in awe of you?

A few rows back, Jessica Day folded her hands in prayer. Comperatore went to her church, said the 48-year-old nurse. He sat in the pews there every Sunday with his family. Although Day didn’t know him well, she said, she could tell he was devoted to Jesus.

“But even if you don’t believe in God, you can believe in this,” she said, pointing to the friends, neighbors and strangers who had trudged out despite the pouring rain.

She wore a pink hoodie she had bought at a fundraiser for a teenager in town who had suffered a brain injury.

“That’s what we do here,” she said. “We stand up for each other.”