The man arrested for the alleged attempted assassination of former President and Republican candidate for the White House, Donald Trump, on Sunday had been convicted more than 20 years ago for possession of a machine gun, according to local media.
The former president suffered his second assassination attempt this summer after an individual, who was detained by the Secret Service and did not shoot the president, approached the golf course where the Republican was playing, armed with an AK-47 rifle with a telescopic sight.
The detainee is a 58-year-old man who is very active on social media, named Ryan Wesley Routh, who has lived in North Carolina and Hawaii, according to local media. He was apparently an independent voter but had registered for the Democratic Party primaries ahead of the elections next November. His occupation: construction entrepreneur.
In 2002, according to court records obtained by several media outlets, he was convicted of possession of a weapon of mass destruction — a fully automatic machine gun. Records also show convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of stolen property and hit-and-run.
According to NBCmore than 100 criminal charges have been filed against Ryan Routh in North Carolina. He is now believed to be under arrest.
The detainee’s son told CNN that it is not like his father to “do something crazy, much less violent.” “I don’t know what happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion,” he told the outlet. According to CNNRouth was deeply involved in the Ukrainian war against Russia and visited the European country in 2022. He had expressed on his social networks his willingness to enlist against Russian troops, something that he did not later carry out despite even saying that he was willing to give his life for that cause, and he had been critical of Trump for saying that he would end the war in a flash and for his closeness during his mandate (2016-2022) to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Various reports claim that he helped recruit uniformed personnel for the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, but this entity He has denied it to the BBC“We would like to clarify that Ryan Wesley Routh has never been part of, associated with or connected to the International Legion in any way. Any statement or suggestion to the contrary is completely inaccurate,” they say.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed that what happened at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, is being investigated as an apparent “attempted murder.”
Palm Beach police surround Trump International Golf Club following the attempted attack on Donald Trump yesterday.
Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt on July 13 during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a 20-year-old man shot him with a rifle, wounding him in the right ear.
The Secret Service shot and killed the attacker, who fired from a high position outside the compound, where one member of the audience died from a gunshot wound.
The incident led to numerous resignations over security failures at the event, including that of the then director of the US Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle.
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
