Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old white man, is the individual who allegedly brandished the AK-47 rifle through the fence of the golf course where Donald Trump was playing this Sunday afternoon, according to what the police revealed to various media outlets. .The Americans. Routh, who is already in police custody, was crouching in the bushes near Palm Beach, Florida, when one of the Secret Service agents discovered him and opened fire.
After being caught, Routh attempted to flee in a black Nissan pickup truck. An eyewitness saw Routh flee in the vehicle and took a photo showing the license plate, which officers were later able to use to arrest him. At the time of his arrest, the man appeared calm, did not ask why he was being detained and was unarmed when he was removed from the car, Sheriff William D. Snyder told local station WPTV.
At the location where the individual was pointed at Trump, approximately 500 yards away, agents found the AK-47, two backpacks and a GoPro camera. The AK-47 is a weapon with a range of approximately 700 yards.
Police records indicate that in 2002, Routh was convicted in North Carolina for possession of a machine gun, according to NCB News. There is also another case that same year, reported by local news outlet Greensboro News & Record, in which an individual with the same name was arrested after a three-hour standoff with police. In total, more than 100 criminal charges have been filed against Ryan Routh in North Carolina.
In March 2023, Routh was interviewed by the New York Times in a report about Americans traveling to Ukraine to help in the war. In the article, Routh is described as “a former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina” who had no military experience. The man explained that he spent several months in Ukraine in 2022 and was trying to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban to fight on the Ukrainian front. The man told North American media that he had already traveled to Washington to meet with politicians and shore up his support for Ukraine.
“I want to fly to Krakow and go to the Ukrainian border as a volunteer, fight and die,” he posted a few weeks after the Russian invasion on his X account. The profile, inactive for two months, has already been suspended. In the profile photo, Routh appears wearing a print of the American flag. The image shows a man with reddish-brown hair and a slim build.
His X account also featured posts criticizing Republican Donald Trump and Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. In this year’s primaries, he supported Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, the two rivals Trump defeated. In 2020, however, Routh expressed admiration for Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. In another 2020 post, Routh invited North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Hawaii for a vacation and offered to serve as his “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes with the United States.
In a Linkedin profile that is also named Ryan Routh and is still open, he explains that he left North Carolina and settled in Oahu, Hawaii, where he builds “very simple structures for the less fortunate.” “Constantly focused on contributing as much as I can to the community, always trying to contribute much more than I receive,” he says in his profile.
The business in question is called Camp Box Honolulu and, according to the experience described, has been open since May 2018. On the company’s website, in the “About Us” section, another image of Routh appears. Routh’s eldest son, Oran, described his father as a “loving and caring man, and an honest and hardworking man,” in a message sent to CNN. “I don’t know what happened in Florida, and I hope things were just blown out of proportion, because from what little I’ve heard, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy I know who would do anything crazy, let alone violent,” he said. At this time, the FBI is continuing its investigation and does not know the suspect’s motives.
