Corey Comperatore’s fire gear will be on stage with Trump during RNC speech.

Firefighter Corey Comperatore’s gear will be placed on the stage during former President Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.

Comperatore, a 50-year-old Sarver, Pennsylvania, resident and volunteer firefighter, was killed while shielding his family from gunfire on Saturday when a would-be assassin opened fire on Trump during a rally in Butler. Trump and two others, 74-year-old James Copenhaver and 57-year-old David Dutch, were also wounded in the shooting.

A memorial for volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, an attendee killed by gunfire at a campaign rally of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Saturday, is displayed at the Buffalo Township Fire Company 27 in Pennsylvania on July 14, 2024. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)

Comperatore’s wife, Helen Comperatore, told the New York Post that they were close to celebrating their 29th wedding anniversary when they went to the event. “He’s my hero,” Helen Comperatore said, who went on to describe her husband’s last words as gun fire erupted at the event. “He just said, ‘Get down!’ That was the last thing he said.”

“Me and the kids were all there as a family,” she added. “He was just excited. It was going to be a nice day with the family.”

Former Buffalo Township Fire Chief Corey Comperatore is shown with his daughters in an undated family photo. (Helen Comperatore/Facebook)

Corey Comperatore served as a fire chief for the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company. The department set up a memorial with Comperatore’s uniform outside the firehouse to honor him in the days after his death, describing him as a “brother, son, husband, father and friend.”

Helen Comperatore said President Biden reached out to her after the incident but that she “didn’t want to talk to him.”

Corey Comperatore (Allyson Comperatore/Facebook)

“I didn’t talk to Biden,” she said. “My husband was a devout Republican, and he would not have wanted me to talk to him.”

“I don’t have any ill-will towards Joe Biden,” she added. “I’m not one of those people that gets involved in politics. I support Trump, that’s who I’m voting for, but I don’t have ill-will towards Biden.”