“The hatred for one man took the life of the one man we loved the most,” she said. “Hatred has no limits and love has no bounds. Pray for my sister-in-law, nieces, my mother, sister, me, and his nieces and nephews as this feels like a terrible nightmare but we know it is our painful reality.”
A Facebook post by Comperatore’s daughter Allyson was circulating the internet on Sunday; in it she called the event “a real-life nightmare.”
“What was supposed to be an exciting day that we had all looked forward to (ESPECIALLY my dad), turned into the most traumatizing experiences someone could imagine,” she wrote.
Allyson called her father “the best dad a girl could ever ask for,” adding that he “was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church and our members as family.”
“The media will not tell you that he died a real-life superhero. They are not going to tell you how quickly he threw my mom and I to the ground,” she said.
“They are not going to tell you that he shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us. And I want nothing more than to cry on him and tell him thank you. I want nothing more than to wake up and for this to not be reality for me and my family,” she said.
A GoFundMe fundraiser had raised nearly $500,000 for the Comperatore family by Sunday evening.
Joseph Bukuras is a journalist at the Catholic News Agency. Joe has prior experience working in state and federal government, in non-profits, and Catholic education. He has contributed to an array of publications and his reporting has been cited by leading news sources, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the Catholic University of America. He is based out of the Boston area.
Matt McDonald is a staff reporter for the National Catholic Register and the editor of the New Boston Post.