(The Center Square) – Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old man accused of trying to assassinate former President Donald Trump during a round of golf on Sunday, was camped out on the golf course with a rifle and a bag of food for nearly 12 hours before being spotted.
Routh, who is registered to vote in both Hawaii and North Carolina, faces federal charges of possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Routh worked a builder in a suburb of Honolulu.
On top of the federal gun charges, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday the state has the jurisdiction to prosecute Routh for attempted murder. If convicted on that charge, Routh could face life in prison.
Long before Trump decided to play golf at his club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday, Routh was camped by the fence along Summit Boulevard, a busy roadway by Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach.
A U.S. Secret Service agent, who was a hole or two ahead of Trump walking the perimeter, spotted the rifle sticking out from the tree line. The agent fired in the direction of the rifle before a witness told authorities Routh sped away in a Nissan sport utility vehicle.
Routh’s cell phone records indicated he had been camped out from 1:59 a.m. to 1:31 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 15, according to a criminal complaint filed in the federal case. Investigators found an SKS-style rifle with a scope and an unreadable serial number, a backpack, a bag of food and a GoPro camera.
Authorities quickly caught Routh on I-95. It wasn’t his first time being arrested.
Greensboro Police had arrested Routh for possession of a weapon of mass destruction on Dec. 16, 2002, according to records from the Guilford District Court in North Carolina. Routh, then 36, had a fully automatic machine gun during a three-hour standoff with police after a vehicle stop, according to a report from the Greensboro News & Record. That felony conviction made it illegal for Routh to own a firearm.
In 2010, he served a suspended sentence for possession of stolen goods, according to records from the North Carolina Department Of Adult Correction.
Online, Routh portrayed himself as an international freedom fighter who voted for Trump in 2016 before writing a self-published book in 2023 urging Iran to assassinate Trump.
He told news media he spent months in Ukraine working to bring foreign fighters in from Afghanistan. It’s not clear if he ever got anyone to sign up for that plan.
Routh was active for a time on Twitter, the social media company now known as X. In 2020, he posted that he voted for Trump in 2016, but was disappointed.
“@realDonaldTrump While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving;” he wrote, “are you retarded; I will be glad when you gone.”
In his 2023 book, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” Routh wrote that Iran was free “to assassinate Trump.” The book said Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal was a “tremendous blunder.” Routh referred to Trump as a “buffoon” and a “fool” for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
In a brief interview with CNN, Oran Routh, the suspect’s son, called his father “loving and caring” and an “honest, hardworking man,” the outlet reported.
“Ryan is my father, and I don’t have any comment beyond a character profile of him as a loving and caring father, and honest, hardworking man. I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard, it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent. He’s a good father, and a great man, and I hope you can portray him in an honest light,” Oran Routh said on Sunday.
One of Routh’s neighbors in the Honolulu suburb of Kaaawa said he was “a very good neighbor” while another called him a “creep,” KITV4 Island News reported.
