The SWAT team leader who fired on President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin at last year’s campaign rally in Butler has spoken for the first time about the moment he took the “ninth shot” that slowed the gunman.
Aaron Zaliponi, an Army combat veteran turned sniper, recalled thinking: “I just got you,” as he struck Thomas Matthew Crooks with a bullet, slowing his salvo of gunshots that struck the president and killed one person in the crowd on July 13 last year at the Pennsylvania rally.
The 46-year-old, a police sergeant with the rural Adams Township who serves on the county SWAT team, is convinced that his single shot is what saved more lives that day, he told The Washington Post. He believes his bullet hit Crooks’ gun or the man himself, delaying more shots, before a Secret Service sniper delivered the fatal shot on the would-be assassin.
Officials, including Butler County’s district attorney, the county’s SWAT team commander and Congressman Clay Higgins, who investigated the assassination attempt, agree that “the ninth shot stopped Crooks from firing again.”
A bullet grazed Trump’s ear as Secret Service agents bundled him to the ground after 20-year-old Crooks opened fire at the campaign rally. Two others were injured and one of his bullets killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore.
Zaliponi, a father of two, recollected standing in the open field about 115 yards away from Crooks, between him and the rally stage. “There you are,” Zaliponi recalled thinking as he spotted the gunman on the roof of a warehouse.
He took out his M4 SWAT rifle, aligned the red dot of its scope with the gunman’s chin and fired just once.
Crooks “jerked hard to the right and slumped over his weapon,” Zaliponi told The Post. “It wasn’t like he was ducking or flinching. Something smacked him. Whether it was my round hitting the buttstock or the buttstock exploding in his face, I know I hit him.”
Crooks didn’t fire again.
The 6-foot-3 police sergeant revealed that he only ended up being posted in a red barn to the north of the rally stage because he lost a coin toss. His colleague won the coveted position of joining the federal counterassault team to stay close to Trump during the visit.
As the crowd was restlessly waiting for the president to appear, a local officer pointed out Crooks as one of four people behaving suspiciously, Zaliponi recalled. “Just keep an eye on him,” Zaliponi said he told the officer. “Let me know what’s going on.”
About 20 minutes before Trump went onstage, an alert came over the radio about a young male “lurking around” the warehouses belonging to local business Agr International.
Police lost sight of Crooks and called in more officers to track him down, according to transcripts obtained by The Post.
Zaliponi and members of the SWAT team left their positions in the barn and looked towards the Agr building, he told The Post.
“Male on the roof with a long gun,” SWAT commander Ed Lenz urgently relayed over the radio.
“Go, go, go,” Zaliponi recalled ordering members of his counterassault team to race to the complex where Crooks was.
“Technically, I should have gone with my team,” he told the outlet. “I don’t know what it was, but something told me to stay there.”
Zaliponi and his rifle’s red-dot sight had no magnification, making Crooks a challenging target, when he was spotted on the roof.
He aimed for Crooks’s chin, quickly evaluating that it would be better to risk missing low and hit his body than miss high. “All this went through my head in a millisecond,” Zaliponi said.
Zaliponi said he was “110 percent sure” he made the shot after seeing Crooks jerk to the right and slump backward.
He kept his rifle pointed on the roof’s peak before a Secret Service countersniper fired the shot that killed Crooks.
Despite his heroism, for weeks after the shooting, Zaliponi said he has flashbacks. He struggled with one regret. “I wish I would have just looked up to the roof sooner,” Zaliponi told The Post. “Maybe everyone’s still here.”
While the FBI said there was “no forensic evidence” that the ninth bullet hit Crooks or his rifle, others have credited Zaliponi for his actions that day.
“It’s very reasonable to say Aaron Zaliponi saved lives that day,” GOP Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, told The Post. “At the moment he needed to perform, he performed beautifully, and he has not been recognized enough for that.”
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