'I know I hit him.'
The Butler County SWAT operator who shot at would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and effectively ended his assault on the July 13 Donald Trump rally in Western Pennsylvania has been identified as Sgt. Aaron M. Zaliponi of the Adams Township Police Department.
The revelation was made in Washington, D.C., by U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) during the first hearing of the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump.
According to testimony at the hearing, Zaliponi quickly acquired Crooks in the sight of his M4 rifle while Crooks was firing his AR-15 at Trump and the rally crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Zaliponi fired what became known as shot No. 9, which knocked Crooks down and prevented him from resuming his attack before a U.S. Secret Service counter-sniper fired a fatal shot to the head.
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'As I’m getting my target acquired, I’m getting my red dot up, I can see the gas emit from his barrel, his muzzle.'
“My investigation thus far leads me to conclude that Zaliponi’s 'shot 9' impacted Crooks in some way, effectively stopping him from ever squeezing the trigger again,” Higgins told Blaze News after the hearing. “Stock of his AR or into his rear shoulder, I’m not sure, but impact.
“Zaliponi never took his red dot off of Crooks, and as Crooks rose up from shot 9, Zaliponi was a half-second away from pressing another round into Crooks when the USSS southern counter-sniper team ended the threat,” Higgins said.
The hearing served as a bit of redemption for state and local Pennsylvania police, who were initially blamed by the Secret Service for Trump being shot in the ear during a speech before tens of thousands of rally-goers at the Butler Farm Show Inc. fairgrounds.
The task force chairman, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), lauded state and local police for doing “everything you were asked to do that day.”
FBI evidence photo shows damage to the stock of the AR-15-style rifle used by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler Township, Pa., on July 13, 2024.
“I know how deeply wounded you were after that event because the first time that anybody pointed fingers at anybody, it was at local law enforcement,” said Kelly, who lives in Butler. “‘They didn’t do their job.’ You being here today is a validation of what you did that day, your commitment to that day, and going over and above what you normally would have done.”
Testimony and comments from many task force members placed the blame for the near-killing of Trump squarely on the U.S. Secret Service. A preliminary report issued Sept. 25 by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs echoed the same themes.
Crooks was able to sneak onto the roof of the nearby American Glass Research complex, run north to south, and set up a sniper’s position without the Secret Service detecting him.
Just after 6:11 p.m., Crooks shot Trump in the right ear, fatally shot volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounded bystanders David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
Higgins read an excerpt from the transcribed interview of Zaliponi by task force investigators:
I hear the first three: crack, crack, crack. At this point I’m like, "OK, where are we at here?" I look up and that’s when I see Crooks. I got his head, his shoulders. I could see a rifle. At that point I hear another crack. That’s when I start pulling my weapon up. He gets three off. As I’m getting my target acquired, I’m getting my red dot up, I can see the gas emit from his barrel, his muzzle.
Then right after that I hear the snap of his fifth shot go off. Then immediately after that I press one off, and that’s when he immediately goes down. When I say goes down, it wasn’t like he was ducking to get out of the way. I mean, I know I hit him. Like, there’s no doubt about it.
He goes down, he kind of jerks to the right. Then, he slumps over slowly, and then he kind of slowly rolls backward out of my field of view. So at that point, I did not have a second shot. At that point, he tries to recover. Seconds after that the Secret Service from a different vantage point, a higher vantage point, takes the killing shot.
Zaliponi, 45, is one of two sergeants in the 18-officer Adams Township Police Department in Mars, Pennsylvania. He served in the U.S. Army National Guard from Pennsylvania, including a 2009 tour in Iraq.
Zaliponi was behind the bleachers northeast of the stage when he noticed commotion on the AGR property and heard radio traffic about a man on the roof, Higgins said.
Sgt. Edward Lenz, Adams Township Police Department, Commander, Butler County Emergency Services Unit; Patrolman Drew Blasko, Butler Township Police Department; Lt. John Herold, Pennsylvania State Police; and Patrick Sullivan, former United States Secret Service Agent, testify during the first hearing of the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump on Sept. 26, 2024.
“He left his deployed position and ran into a position where he thought he might be able to get a shot if there was a shooter up on the roof, somebody on the roof,” Higgins said.
Edward Lenz, also a sergeant with the Adams Township Police Department, who was in command of the Butler County Emergency Services Unit SWAT team on July 13, told the panel he is certain that Zaliponi's shot “was on target.”
'There you go, sir. That’s different than impossible.'
“When shots rang out, he was able to quickly identify where the shots were coming from,” Lenz said. “He observed the shooter, he shouldered his rifle, he acquired his target, and he fired one round at the shooter, which caused the shooter to recoil and briefly fall out of sight.
“He did this less than six seconds after shots began,” Lenz said, “using his short-barrel M4 platform rifle chambered in 5.56, with an Eotec weapon sight at a distance of approximately 110 yards.”
In his Aug. 15 preliminary report on the assassination attempt, Higgins said he believes Crooks was “fragged” and possibly injured in the shoulder when the shot fired by Zaliponi struck the buttstock of his AR-15 rifle.
During the Sept. 26 hearing, Higgins asked the medical examiner who did the autopsy on Crooks if two bullets could have caused what the doctor described as a single gunshot wound to the head that caused Crooks' death.
“You’re saying it’s not possible that shot No. 9 went all the way through Crooks, and you had no way of knowing that because it was in the same wound that was further affected by shot number 10? You’re saying that’s not possible?” Higgins asked Dr. Ariel Goldschmidt of the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner.
“There was no evidence on the body of that occurring,” Goldschmidt replied.
“There you go, sir,” Higgins said. “That’s different than impossible.”
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