Washington: The man arrested after pointing a rifle through a fence ringing former President Donald Trump's golf course in Florida on Sunday never got off a shot, but he appears to have remained undetected for nearly 12 hours before being spotted by a Secret Service agent who drove him off with a volley of gunfire, officials said Monday.
The man, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, a building contractor with an extensive criminal history, never had the former president in his line of sight but was able to hide in the bushes just outside the fence on the edge of the course until Trump was only hundreds of yards away.
Routh did not fire at "our agents" before they fired at him, Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting Secret Service director, said at a news conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Routh wore a blue inmate jumpsuit at his initial appearance in a federal courtroom in Florida on Monday. He faces two felony gun charges that allow authorities to keep him in custody while they continue their investigation into what the FBI has called an assassination attempt.
The FBI's top agent in Miami, Jeffrey B. Veltri, speaking to reporters, said the bureau had no information that the suspect was working with anybody else. Agents in Hawaii and North Carolina -- two states where the suspect lived -- had fanned out to conduct interviews as part of a broad investigation into his travels, how he had acquired the rifle and what his motivations had been.
Among the unanswered questions is how Routh knew Trump would be on the course. While Trump frequently plays golf at his properties, his Sunday outing was not a publicly announced appearance, unlike the rally in July in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman got off multiple shots, leaving Trump slightly wounded, one rally attendee dead and two others wounded.
"It was an off-the-record movement, meaning it was not on the former president's official schedule," Rowe said.
Cellphone data retrieved by the FBI indicated that Routh's phone was "in the vicinity of the area along the tree line" of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach beginning at 1:59 a.m. Sunday, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Monday.
It remained there until 1:31 p.m., when a keen-eyed Secret Service agent walking one hole ahead of Trump spotted the barrel of a rifle and opened fire, the complaint said.
Routh, wearing a faded T-shirt, fled the scene, leaving behind a loaded SKS-style rifle -- a semiautomatic developed by the Soviets in the 1940s -- along with a scope, a GoPro digital camera, two bags and a black plastic bag containing food, prosecutors said.
The SKS rifle has appeared around the world in various conflicts and is popular in the United States, given its relatively low cost of around several hundred dollars.
Routh was identified by a witness near the golf club who saw him jump into a black Nissan SUV and speed away. He was arrested by local sheriff's deputies after heading northbound on Interstate 95.
A brief segment of body camera video released by local officials shows his roadside arrest at 2:14 p.m. Sunday. The video, less than a minute long, shows several law enforcement officers from the back, with their weapons drawn, shouting instructions for the driver to take two steps to his right and then to walk backward toward them.
Routh, wearing sunglasses, dark pants and boots, is briefly seen in the video walking backward with his arms in the air, holding the hem of his shirt over his head, before officers handcuff him and take him into custody.
Routh has a significant criminal record, including a 2002 conviction in North Carolina for possessing a weapon of mass destruction after he barricaded himself at his place of business with a gun, according to the court filing. The FBI said he had numerous felony convictions for stolen goods.
His criminal record bars him from legally possessing a firearm under federal law.
The FBI disclosed at the news conference that someone had passed a tip to the FBI in 2019 that he was in possession of a firearm despite being a felon. The FBI interviewed the person who made the claim but did not receive any more information, and the case was closed.
The serial number on the semiautomatic rifle recovered by investigators, including a contingent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was scratched off, making it more difficult to trace its origins, according to officials familiar with the investigation.
The weapon has been sent to the FBI's laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, where experts will try to determine the serial number. If that does not work, it could be sent to the ATF's lab, the officials said.
Routh was charged with possession of a weapon as a convicted felon and for obliterating the serial number of a firearm. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison or a $500,000 fine.
He could be charged with additional crimes as the investigation continues.
The Secret Service plans to conduct an internal review of the security episode at the Florida golf course similar to the review being conducted for the Butler shooting, said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the service.
At the news conference in Florida, Ric L. Bradshaw, the Palm Beach County sheriff, said that he had spoken with Trump and that the former president told him he felt "safe."
Trump claimed Monday morning that "inflammatory language" from Democrats had provoked what authorities are investigating as an assassination attempt against him, urging his rivals to tone down their speech even as he called them the "enemy from within" and "the real threat."
President Joe Biden spoke with Trump on Monday, a White House official said, and conveyed relief that he was safe. The two shared a cordial conversation and Trump expressed his thanks for the call, the official said.
Biden told reporters Monday that the Secret Service "needs more help."
Routh was interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Routh, who had no military experience, said he had traveled there after Russia's invasion in 2022 to recruit Afghan soldiers for the fight.
He told the Times he once visited Washington to meet with politicians to strengthen support for Ukraine, though the organization he claimed to be speaking with, known as the Helsinki Group, said it had no record of contact with him.
"I'm just a U.S. citizen that's helping out," he said at the time.