US media named Ryan Wesley Routh, whom AFP interviewed in Kyiv in 2022 where he had traveled to support the war effort, as the suspected would-be assassin of Donald Trump.
US media said it was Routh, 58, who was arrested after US 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. He is currently being detained by the authorities.
