Jim Copenhaver, wounded at Butler Trump rally, dies at 76

James "Jim" Copenhaver, one of the two men who survived gunshot wounds in the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, has died. He was 76. Copenhaver died on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, a little more than two years after an attack that killed one rallygoer, wounded two others and grazed Trump's ear as he spoke from the stage.

Copenhaver, of Moon Township, was shot twice as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a rooftop outside the rally grounds, once in the left triceps and once in the abdomen. He spent the rest of his life with permanent injuries from those wounds, including bullet fragments that were still inside his body when he died.

News of the death was first reported Thursday by Ken Silva of Headline USA, who wrote that he was informed of it Thursday morning and cited a source close to the family. The source confirmed the death but declined to provide more details. The official cause has not been released.

Two years of surgeries and nerve damage

Copenhaver underwent numerous surgeries after Butler, according to the lawsuit he filed against the U.S. government in June. The procedures included closure of a traumatic abdominal wall hernia, a laparotomy, laceration repair and treatment for the transection of his colon. None of it removed all of the metal left in him by the gunfire.

He walked with a cane afterward. Nerve damage left his left leg numb, and he could not lie on his stomach. Both he and the other wounded man, David Dutch, faced rehabilitation for the rest of their lives.

Copenhaver had raised a family, worked for more than 30 years and played in a band on the side before that afternoon in Butler turned him into a figure in a national criminal case.

The gunfire in Butler killed Corey Comperatore, a former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company, and grazed Trump in the ear. Copenhaver and Dutch were the only other people struck. Secret Service snipers pinpointed Crooks on a rooftop outside the venue and killed him there.

Lawsuit against the government still active

Copenhaver and Dutch filed separate but similar suits against the United States in federal court in June 2026. The complaints quote Senate findings that the Secret Service's conduct amounted to a "cascade of preventable failures." The filing set out the operations each man had gone through and the damage the gunshot wounds left behind, including the fragments that could not be taken out of Copenhaver's body.

Copenhaver's wife, Marianne, is a party to his case, and Dutch and his wife to Dutch's. They are seeking compensation for what they say were the Secret Service's security failures, Headline USA reported. Copenhaver's death does not remove his family from the litigation.

Dutch, a Marine veteran, had multiple surgeries of his own, including repair of his liver. Like Copenhaver, he will continue to undergo rehabilitation for the rest of his life.

Copenhaver had spoken publicly about the shooting and about the security lapses he believed occurred that day. A year after the rally he told KDKA that the shrapnel in his pelvis might never be removed. Bullet fragments were still in his body more than two years after they entered it.

What happened at the Butler rally

Crooks waited six minutes into Trump's speech on July 13, 2024, before firing eight shots from an AR-15-style rifle, according to FBI documents released on Sept. 15, 2026. Trump was struck in the ear and pumped his fist in the air as blood trickled from it, surrounded by Secret Service members who then led him off the stage.

Reporting on those files, NBC News listed the people hit at the rally as Comperatore, 50, who was killed, and Copenhaver, then 74, and Dutch, then 57, who were critically injured.

Crooks, an engineering student, had spent two years at the Community College of Allegheny County, where he received his associate degree, and was planning to take engineering classes at Robert Morris University, the documents show. Professors described him as a sharp student who was a delight in class.

At Bethel Park High School, Crooks did not appear to have close friends and was occasionally bullied, former classmates told investigators, though the bullying was never considered excessive, a chronic issue or outside of normal high school behaviors. The documents said he would shut down around large groups of people or authority figures. He told his father he was interested in joining the armed services to work on nuclear submarines or with aircraft.

House Republicans mark his death

House Republicans issued a statement saying they were deeply saddened by the passing of Copenhaver, who was gravely wounded in the shooting in Butler. The statement said he "endured unimaginable hardship with strength and perseverance."

FBI files detail the gunman's rifle practice

The FBI released 600 pages of newly unclassified material on Sept. 15, made up of interviews with Crooks' relatives, neighbors, teachers and classmates, along with reports from responding law enforcement officers and details of the investigation that followed. The collection is the first detailed look at the man who tried to kill Trump and at his obsession with firearms.

Crooks spent the day before the rally at the Clairton Sportsmen's Club in Clairton, Pennsylvania, where he practiced shooting once a week on average, the files show. A person at the club told investigators he remembered Crooks practicing a 100-yard shot that day. An employee at Keystone Shooting Center outside Pittsburgh described him as "an odd duck" and "not someone they would want their daughter to spend time with," federal investigators noted.

Motive still unknown, Grassley says

"We don't know anything about the motivation [of] why [Crooks] wanted to kill Trump," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a brief interview, according to NBC News. Grassley's office said it showed some of the documents to the New York Post in person. NBC News requested them from Grassley, and his office did not provide them.

Crooks was a registered Republican who was critical of both political parties, according to the files, and he donated $15 to the Democratic-run Progressive Turnout Project in 2021. Classmates told investigators he was shocked that Trump was elected president in 2016 but otherwise discussed politics nonchalantly. Investigators wrote that what made him tick was his enjoyment in being the smartest person in the room.

Crooks' father told investigators his son developed the interest in guns during the Covid pandemic and perfected his aim over five years, the New York Post reported after being shown the documents. He said his son was a terrible shot at first but practiced on his own and at shooting ranges, and that he ordered gun parts online using the pseudonym Bob Dole. NBC News said it had not independently verified the documents the Post cited.

Copenhaver wrote the foreword to Silva's book "The Trump Assassination Plots," published in May 2026, using the space to consider how he would be remembered after surviving the shooting.

With a bullet lodged next to my spine, I'm going to have a diminished usage of my left leg for the rest of my life. It's numb from just beneath the kneecap to the hip area. It just doesn't feel like my leg. I guess that's the price of making history.

With his death, Dutch is the only one of the two men wounded at Butler who is still living, and the only person shot that day who is still a plaintiff.

The FBI files released on Sept. 15 did not settle the question of why Crooks fired, and no cause has been given for Copenhaver's death. The lawsuit over the Secret Service's handling of the Butler rally continues, with his widow among those pressing it.