(Ken Silva, Headline USA) At Thursday’s much-anticipated congressional hearing into the July 13 Trump shooting, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., identified the local cop who took the first shot at would-be assassin Thomas Crooks—stopping the gunman from firing further.
Higgins identified the heroic local cop as Adams Township Police Department Sgt. Aaron Zaliponi, a member of the Butler County Emergency Services Unit. A quick Google search revealed that Zaliponi is a Butler native who served the U.S. military in Iraq.
BREAKING: Rep. Clay Higgins identified the heroic local cop who first shot at Thomas Crooks as Adams Township PD Sgt. Aaron Zaliponi
I Googled Zaliponi and this appears to be him
"Sgt. Aaron Zaliponi, an infantry squad leader, with 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 28th… pic.twitter.com/Gv0TKLZFQF
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) September 26, 2024
According to Higgins, Zaliponi’s shot may have hit Crooks’s rifle—which stopped him after eight shots, allowing the Secret Service to put the kill shot in him about 10 seconds later.
“The 9th shot fired on J13 was from a Butler SWAT operator from the ground about 100 yards away from the AGR building. Shot 9 hit Crooks’ rifle stock and fragged his face/neck/right shoulder area from the stock breaking up,” Higgins said last month in a preliminary report, calling the local cop a “total badass.”
“When he had sighted the shooter Crooks as a mostly obscured by foliage moving target on the AGR rooftop, he immediately left his assigned post and ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire while Crooks was firing 8 rounds. On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot. He stopped Crooks and importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR,” Higgins added.
Last month, the FBI released a photo of Crooks’s rifle, showing a chunk missing from its stock—which suggests that Zaliponi’s shot indeed hit there.
I wonder if the FBI does this shit on purpose to make the schizos go crazy.
At first it looked to me like the rifle on the right is different because there's no chunk shown missing — but the stock is just collapsed so it's harder to see the missing chunk pic.twitter.com/TuFHZwtzq9— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 28, 2024
However, the FBI has claimed it has “no forensic evidence indicating that [the round fired by the local officer] either struck our subject or the subject’s rifle.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Allegheny County Medical Examiner Ariel Goldschmidt, who conducted the autopsy on Crooks, also said there’s no evidence that Zaliponi hit Crooks.
Higgins asked Goldschmidt whether it was possible that Zaliponi’s shot caused a fragment to enter Crooks’s shoulder, which was later also hit by the Secret Service sniper. Goldschmidt also insisted that was impossible, though it’s not clear how he could make that determination.
Zaliponi didn’t return a phone call from Headline USA seeking comment.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
