Just before the shooting began at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Becky Krivak’s husband, John, tapped her on the shoulder.

Police snipers were aiming at the AGR International Inc. building, he told her.

“I looked, but I felt safe, and I wanted to watch Trump,” said Becky, a member of the Zelienople Church of Christ, about 20 miles southwest of Butler. “That’s when I heard the first bullet.”

The exact timeline of Saturday’s events at the Butler Farm Show, the rally venue, is the subject of multiple law enforcement and congressional investigations. 

Trump and at least two others were wounded. Retired fire chief Corey Comparatore was killed. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman, opened fire from the AGR roof, less than 150 meters (164 yards) from the farm show stage but outside the secured area.

“We didn’t know he was hit,” Becky said of Trump. “We were just getting down and taking cover.”

‘A bad feeling’

Becky almost skipped it all. But the farm show grounds are just a 15-minute walk from the couple’s home. So she and John, a former Church of Christ minister, went there the evening before to see how things would be set up. They decided to join the crowd of Trump supporters.

Becky had never been to a Trump rally before and said she was somewhat fearful about attending. But the ardent Trump supporter said her husband had been praying about the event for several weeks — and for 30 minutes before they left.

Some friends and family members she called “radicalized” have disowned her over her political views, she said. But young people at the dental practice where she’s the treatment coordinator were planning to go, and she wanted to stand up for what she believed. In the end, at least one co-worker did not attend because “she had a bad feeling about it.”

The first few hours she described as “like a family reunion.” She chatted with some women she met as they were waiting to get in, and they sang an impromptu “Star-Spangled Banner” together. She said that went well, “until it got to that high soprano part!”

A flag hanging over the stage became twisted by the wind, and Becky thought it looked like an angel, that perhaps the event staff had shaped it that way intentionally. They lowered it and untangled it before Trump took the stage. Later, images of the flag had “the internet convinced that (Trump) was protected by a higher power,” the New York Post reported.

Becky grew up in western Pennsylvania. She and John lived in several places, including a tour of duty in Japan when he was in the military, then returned home. He earned a biblical languages degree from Harding University in Searcy, Ark., and preached for about a decade.  Today he works for MSA Safety Inc., which produces safety equipment for a variety of high-risk industries. 

The Zelienople church, the couple’s home congregation, comprises about 50 folks. Preacher Nathan Mayes describes the group as “not super political for the most part, though most have a conservative background.”

“I cannot think of anyone I know who specifically espouses a liberal or Democratic leaning,” Mayes said, “but there are several who certainly don’t call themselves Trump supporters, and I’d call myself one of them.”

He knew of no one at the church other than the Krivaks who would have gone to the rally.

And Mayes said no mention was made of the shooting that took place just hours earlier when the congregation gathered for Sunday worship.   

“We prayed for the country in the opening prayer,” he said, “and that was about it.”

‘We’re all grieving’

Becky wants people to pray for her community. She loves Butler.

She’ll be 63 next month, not old enough to remember the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and she thinks she and John were overseas when President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. But when she returned to the dental office and what should have been normal on Monday after the shooting, the Dallas reality of six decades ago was reincarnated in her hometown.

“It was eerie,” she said.

“No one was talking about what happened, but as I reflected, we’re all grieving. This happened in our community. The farm show is where we go for fun. No one will want to go there for fun anymore. I don’t think any of us will be the same going there.”

On her personal Facebook page four days after the shooting, she wrote about chasing an elderly neighbor’s escaping dog down their shared fence line, even though every conversation with the neighbor includes the woman making it clear that she doesn’t like Trump.

“Jesus says, ‘love your neighbor and do good to those who hate you!’” Becky wrote in her post. “I’d run the fence line again! Be the neighbor Jesus would want you to be!”

This piece originally appeared at The Christian Chronicle.

Cheryl Mann Bacon is a Christian Chronicle correspondent who served for 20 years as chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University. In retirement, she is enjoying freelance writing and consulting, especially with churches. Contact her at cheryl@christianchronicle.org.