Shooting victims from Butler Trump rally call out Secret Service failures

Two men who were shot at a Butler County rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this summer told NBC News they continue to deal with health problems related their wounds.

Jim Copenhaver, 74, of Moon and David Dutch, 57, of Plum expressed concerns with security lapses leading up to the July 13 assassination attempt that wounded them and the former president and killed a Buffalo Township firefighter.

“I believe there was 100% negligence on the Secret Service, probably everybody involved in setting that security, down to inter-department communications,” Dutch said in an interview with the outlet. “The negligence was vast. It was terrible.”

“I’m sure there was negligence. It wouldn’t have happened, had it been secure,” Copenhaver said in the interview.

NBC News spoke with both men in Pittsburgh in their first public interviews since the shooting three months ago.

Several probes are underway examining the Secret Service’s handling of security at the rally on the Butler Farm Show grounds. Secret Service officials concluded in a report released last month that communication breakdowns with local police assisting at the rally hampered the agency’s performance.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight rounds from an unsecured roof at the rally, injuring Trump, Copenhaver and Dutch and killing Corey Comperatore, 50.

Crooks, a Bethel Park resident, was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper as he lay on a rooftop about 150 yards from the former president. The agency said in the report that officials knew even before the shooting that the rally site posed a security challenge.

Members of local and state law enforcement who were working at the rally testified during a congressional task force hearing last month that there were communication issues among those providing security. A local officer spotted Crooks and shared a photo of him with a Secret Service agent before the shooting, according to testimony.

Dutch and Copenhaver described their injuries to NBC News.

Copenhaver was shot in the upper arm and abdomen and collapsed onto the bleachers. He said he now has to walk with a cane and lost 30 pounds.

“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,” he said.

Dutch, a Marine veteran, was shot in the liver. He saw chunks of the bleachers and metal flying around until the gunfire ended.

“It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in the chest,” he said.

He lost 25 pounds and still needs help tending to his wound.

Their attorneys told NBC News they plan to file a lawsuit. Trump held a second rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds Oct. 5.