BUTLER, Pa. (CNA) -- The 50-year-old husband and father who was fatally shot Saturday at former president Donald Trump’s campaign rally outside of Pittsburgh was a devoted Christian and “the very best of us,” according to his family and the state’s governor.
Corey Comperatore “went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community. Most especially, Corey loved his family,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a press conference Sunday.
Speaking to reporters north of Pittsburgh, the Democratic governor said that he spoke to Comperatore’s wife and two daughters.
Comperatore was a “girl dad” who worked as a firefighter, Shapiro said.
“I asked Corey’s wife if it would be okay for me to share that we spoke. And she said yes,” Shapiro said on Sunday.
“She also asked that I share with all of you that Corey died a hero. That Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally. Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.”
Comperatore was “an avid supporter of the former president and was so excited to be there last night with him in the community,” the governor added.
Flags will be flying at half staff in the state after the tragedy, Shapiro said.
Comperatore was a chief at the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department. That township is about a 30-minute drive northeast of Pittsburgh.
Comperatore’s LinkedIn and Facebook profiles say that he was a project and tooling engineer at JSP, a manufacturing company.
A Saturday Facebook post from Comperatore’s wife, Helen — posted prior to the shooting — said that the family wasn’t originally sitting in the bleachers behind the former president.
It wasn’t until a campaign official approached the family and asked if they wanted to be seated in the bleachers behind Trump that they were moved, she wrote.
Dawn Comperatore Schafer, who identified herself as Corey’s sister, said on Facebook Sunday that the firefighter “was a hero that shielded his daughters. His wife and girls just lived through the unthinkable and unimaginable. My baby brother just turned 50 and had so much life left to experience.”
“The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we loved the most,” she said. “Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds. Pray for my sister-in-law, nieces, my mother, sister, me, and his nieces and nephews as this feels like a terrible nightmare but we know it is our painful reality.”
A Facebook post by Comperatore’s daughter Allyson was circulating the internet on Sunday; in it she called the event “a real-life nightmare.”
“What was supposed to be an exciting day that we had all looked forward to (ESPECIALLY my dad), turned into the most traumatizing experiences someone could imagine,” she wrote.
Allyson called her father “the best dad a girl could ever ask for,” adding that he “was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church and our members as family.”
“The media will not tell you that he died a real-life superhero. They are not going to tell you how quickly he threw my mom and I to the ground,” she said.
“They are not going to tell you that he shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us. And I want nothing more than to cry on him and tell him thank you. I want nothing more than to wake up and for this to not be reality for me and my family,” she said.
A GoFundMe fundraiser had raised nearly $500,000 for the Comperatore family by Sunday evening.
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