By Megan Guza
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
BUTLER COUNTY, Pa. — Calls to 911 began pouring in within minutes of the July 13 shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler County.
Some callers sounded calm and collected, while others shouted frantically. Some sounded scared. And a few said nothing, leaving the recording to capture the sounds of chaos in the background.
“Gunshots at the Trump rally,” came the first call at 6:12 p.m.
The dispatcher on the other end cut her off: “Yep,” he said. “The police are on the way.”
Recordings of 15 911 calls in the aftermath of the assassination attempt were released by Butler County officials Wednesday after a judge ruled in favor of several media outlets that sued for the recordings last month, according to NBC News, one of the outlets involved in the lawsuit.
The recordings range from 10 seconds to just under a minute and a half.
“We are at the Trump assembly, and there’s a guy shooting — he’s been shooting up the police,” one female caller said.
The dispatcher told her police were aware and “taking care of the situation.” He asked if anyone with her was injured.
“No one’s injured,” she said, “but I’m scared.”
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old spectator at the rally, was killed in the shooting. Trump was struck in the ear by a bullet or shrapnel, and two other rallygoers were injured: Jim Copenhaver, 74, and David Dutch, 57.
How the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks , got onto the roof of a building within a few hundred of the former president has been at the center of multiple investigations. Crooks, of Bethel Park, was killed by a Secret Service counter sniper within seconds of opening fire.
Report after report has detailed a cascade of failures on the part of Secret Service agents tasked with protecting the former president that day, from communications breakdowns to lackadaisical planning.
In one call, an Allegheny County dispatcher transfers a woman the dispatcher described as the wife of one of the injured.
“I called Butler Hospital ,” the woman said when she was transferred to the Butler dispatcher. “He’s not there. They told me to call 911.”
In a separate recording that sounds to be with the same caller, she explained: “His friend was with him. His friend tried to go with the paramedics, they wouldn’t let him because it’s a crime scene. His friend called his wife, and his wife called me.”
The dispatcher said he would find out whatever he could and call her back.
“Oh, please hurry,” she said. “Thank you.”
In another call, a man requests a paramedic for a woman who’s passed out then adds: “They just tried to kill President Trump , you might want to make a note of that.”
Butler County officials initially denied multiple public records requests seeking the release of the 911 calls, as the state’s Right to Know law generally exempts such calls.
The law, however, allows for their release if “the public interest in disclosure outweighs the interest in nondisclosure,” according to The Intercept, which was among the outlets to in turn file lawsuits. A Common Pleas judge ruled this week that the state’s law favored releasing the recordings given “the unique, historical circumstances.”
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