Jim Copenhaver, wounded during the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, has died, according to a statement from his family and posts by Slippery Rock Mayor Jondavid Longo cited in a source report.
Family confirmation and local official’s account
The Copenhaver family provided a statement to Fox News that remembered him as a veteran and “true American patriot.” “James’s dedication to this great country was a defining part of his life… his love of country never wavered,” the family said, per Fox News.
Longo wrote on X that “Jim was shot twice at the Butler rally on July 13, 2024. He survived that day, but he never fully recovered from the wounds. For two years he lived with surgeries, remaining fragments, and pain that never left him.”
Ken Silva, editor of HeadlineUSA, posted on X that it was “no secret that Jim was dealing with permanent injuries from Butler—including having bullet fragments still inside of him.”
What the lawsuit alleged
On June 1, Copenhaver sued the Secret Service regarding the shooting, alleging “negligence, recklessness and/or carelessness” before the gunfire, according to the source report. A quoted passage from the complaint stated: “Due to the failures of the USSS, a twenty-year-old individual who was observed to be acting erratically in the hours before the shooting and who was the subject of an intensive search, managed to climb onto the roof of a building and fire eight shots before being killed by a counter-sniper.”
Attorneys representing Copenhaver in that case did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, the source report said.
Context from the Butler rally
Trump’s right ear was grazed by a bullet when a gunman opened fire at the rally, killing retired firefighter Corey Compatore and wounding two others, according to the source report. The same report said the Secret Service faced criticism after the attempt, and that then-Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned ten days later following testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
