{"id":2896,"date":"2024-10-15T06:46:10","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T06:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/?p=2896"},"modified":"2024-10-15T06:46:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T06:46:10","slug":"2-men-who-were-wounded-when-a-gunman-opened-fire-on-trump-at-rally-say-secret-service-failed-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/2-men-who-were-wounded-when-a-gunman-opened-fire-on-trump-at-rally-say-secret-service-failed-them\/","title":{"rendered":"2 men who were wounded when a gunman opened fire on Trump at rally say Secret Service failed them"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two men who were shot when a gunman tried to assassinate <\/a>former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally said the U.S. Secret Service failed them and Trump that day in July and was negligent in its security response.<\/p>\n

Jim Copenhaver, 74 and David Dutch, 57, told NBC News in an exclusive interview Monday that they were elated to be at the rally and sitting up in the bleachers behind the former president before the gunshots erupted and they were hit.<\/p>\n

Both men said they believed the Secret Service and law enforcement officials were negligent in undertaking their duty to protect a former president and innocent civilians.<\/p>\n

\n
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\"\u201cThe<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe negligence was vast. It was terrible,\u201d Dave Dutch said.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cI believe there was 100% negligence on the Secret Service, probably everybody involved in setting that security, down to inter-department communications,\u201d Dutch said. \u201cThe negligence was vast. It was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more on this story at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>NBCNews.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and watch \u201cNBC Nightly News with Lester Holt\u201d tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET\/5:30 p.m. CT.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure there was negligence. It wouldn\u2019t have happened, had it been secure,\u201d Copenhaver said.<\/p>\n

When asked if he believed the Secret Service failed him and the former president, Dutch said: \u201cBig time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole security setup was poor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the men said they plan to sue and are in the early stages of investigating whom they will pursue a case against.<\/p>\n

Copenhaver and Dutch were critically injured in the July 13\u00a0shooting at the Trump campaign rally in Butler. Copenhaver was shot in the triceps and abdomen, and Dutch was hit in the liver.<\/p>\n

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\"Jim<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jim Copenhaver was shot in the triceps and abdomen.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in the chest,\u201d Dutch said, adding that he could see chunks of the bleacher and metal \u201cflying all around\u201d until the shooting stopped.<\/p>\n

Copenhaver said he didn’t realize what was happening until he saw part of his sleeve get blown away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI turned around to my friend, and I said, \u2018I think I was shot,\u2019 and that\u2019s when I got the second one and then I went down,\u201d he said, adding that he had collapsed onto the bleachers and couldn\u2019t stand up.<\/p>\n

Dutch and Copenhaver said the shooting has left them with ongoing health problems.<\/p>\n

Copenhaver said he has lost 30 pounds and now has to walk with a cane. He still gets pain in his abdomen from time to time.<\/p>\n

Dutch said he still needs help tending to his bullet wound. He lost 25 pounds and can\u2019t drive or lift more than 10 pounds, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I\u2019d be in this position,\u201d he said. \u201cI was usually the other guy helping other people out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a struggle every day,\u201d Dutch said.<\/p>\n

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\"Jim<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jim Copenhaver and David Dutch in Pittsburgh on Monday.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Another man, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the shooting while shielding his family. Trump was wounded <\/a>in the ear.<\/p>\n

A Secret Service countersniper shot and killed the 20-year-old gunman, who had shot from the roof of a building about 450 feet from where the former president was speaking.<\/p>\n

The assassination attempt raised alarm about the Secret Service and security failures that allowed the gunman to fire eight shots at the former president.<\/p>\n

Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service at the time, stepped down this summer after lawmakers called for her to resign.<\/p>\n

Last month, the \u201cinitial mission assurance report\u201d compiled by the Secret Service\u2019s own internal investigators found that bad planning and poor communication among agencies<\/a> caused the security lapses that allowed the assassination attempt to happen.<\/p>\n

Dutch said that during the shooting, he was \u201cangry\u201d at the security lapse that failed to prevent the incident from happening and the fact that someone \u201ctried to shoot the president, shot into a defenseless crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just angry that the whole situation even happened. It should have never happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\"Jim<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Jim Copenhaver said he has lost 30 pounds and now has to walk with a cane.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two men who were shot when a gunman tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally said the U.S. Secret Service failed them and Trump that day in July and was negligent in its security response. Jim Copenhaver, 74 and David Dutch, 57, told NBC News in an exclusive interview Monday that<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump-election-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/VtWevNa7AyVoR1vBFid8ow--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD04MDA-\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/nbc_news_122\/87fd5d80a0a4348cf0294cde7495159d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}