Ryan Routh: What we know about Donald Trump's would-be assassin
Palm Beach, Florida - Ryan Wesley Routh has been widely named as the suspected would-be assassin of Donald Trump.
The 58-year-old was reportedly arrested after Secret Service agents "opened fire on a gunman" carrying an AK-47 style rifle near the boundary of Trump's Florida golf course, where the former president was golfing on Sunday.
The suspect had bolted out of the shrubbery he had been hiding in and escaped in a black car before he was tracked down by authorities.
CNN and CBS reported Routh was a self-employed affordable housing builder in Hawaii who had an arrest record spanning decades and regularly posted on politics and current events, including sometimes criticizing Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
One cause Routh expressed obsessive support for was Ukraine's fight against the invasion launched by Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
"I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE... Can I be the example We must win," Routh said in an X post in March 2022, according to the New York Times, which interviewed him at the time.
AFP spoke to Routh in Kyiv in late April 2022, while he was taking part in a demonstration in support of Ukrainians trapped in the port city of Mariupol.
"Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended, so we need everybody from around the world to stop what they are doing and come here now," he told AFP at the time.
According to CBS, Routh has a long rap sheet that includes possession of a weapon of mass destruction, a hit-and-run, and several misdemeanors.
Though he appears to have voted in the 2024 Democratic primaries, he claimed to have voted for Trump in 2016, before apparently souring on the Republican.
Cover photo: AFPTV / AFP