Ryan Routh, the gunman suspected of attempting to assassinate former President Trump, acted so erratically during his years as a pro-Ukraine activist that other Americans flagged his behavior to U.S. authorities.
Routh was taken into custody in Florida on Sunday after Secret Service agents opened fire at a man pointing a rifle through the fence at a West Palm Beach club where Trump was golfing. The man fled in a black Nissan and was quickly apprehended.
It was Routh’s time in Ukraine, where he traveled after the Russian invasion in 2022 hoping to join the fight, where his tumultuous life full of failures and brushes with the law seemed to spiral further downward and to alarm those who came in contact with him, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who had encounters with Routh in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2022, said his threats of violence worried her so much that she spoke to a Customs and Border Protection officer in an hourlong interview at Washington’s Dulles airport in June 2022.
Walsh said Routh was among the most dangerous Americans she met during her month-and-a-half-long stint in Ukraine.
Routh’s behavior had been flagged to the FBI in the past. A tipster told the FBI in 2019 that Routh had a firearm despite being a felon, but when questioned further wouldn’t verify providing the information, an FBI official said Monday.
Routh was known among volunteer aid groups in Ukraine as a “fraudster” and “kind of a whack job,” said Sarah Adams, a former CIA officer who helped run a network that linked 50 aid groups to coordinate humanitarian and volunteer efforts. He claimed to be working with the Ukrainian government to recruit foreign fighters but wasn’t, she said.
Federal agents still face troubling questions after apprehending Routh as they probe his motives, his methods and whether he acted alone.
Investigators are still trying to learn how long Routh — whose last known residence was in Hawaii — had been present in South Florida before his arrest on Sunday. It is not clear how or where he obtained the AK47-style weapon found at the scene.
Is not yet known how the suspect discovered, last minute, that the former president would be golfing that day at the Trump International Golf Club — an event that had been kept private, McClatchy reports.
So far, law enforcement says he is refusing to cooperate.
William Snyder, the sheriff of Martin County, where Routh was stopped in the vehicle fleeing the scene, said the suspect was driving at the speed of traffic and acted as if he “thought he had gotten away with it.” “It was God’s blessing we caught him,” he said.
An affidavit unsealed on Monday stated that Routh was driving a black Nissan with a tag pulled from a Ford truck that had previously been reported as stolen.
“I think what we’re finding out is, he’s not from this area, which raises the bigger question,” Snyder said. “How does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the former president of the United States is golfing, and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity? ... Is he a lone gunman? If he’s a lone gunman, President Trump is that much safer, because we have him. But if he’s part of a conspiracy, then this whole thing really takes on a very ominous tone.”