A gunman hid for nearly 12 hours in bushes before Donald Trump made an unscheduled decision to play a game of golf at his oceanfront club in Florida – leaving locals stunned at what authorities say appears to be the second attempt to assassinate the former president in as many months.
It was hot and cloudy on Sunday afternoon when Trump and his good friend, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, arrived on the course of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
The former president was on the fifth fairway at 13:31 EDT (17:31 GMT) local time, an area adjacent to busy roads near Palm Beach International Airport, when a member of his protection detail spotted a rifle poking out of foliage by the sixth hole.
Trump – who was evacuated unharmed – recounted at an event on Monday night that he heard “probably four or five” shots ring out in the near-distance.
A quick-thinking Secret Service agent had opened fire in the direction of the suspect, who was about 300-500 yards away and did not have a clear line of sight to Trump, federal investigators said.
The gunman had been crouching in the well-manicured shrubbery and tall palm trees that line the perimeter of the 27-hole course since 01:30 local time on Sunday morning, according to mobile phone records, cited by federal officials.
The suspect was equipped with two digital cameras, a black plastic bag of food, an SKS-style semi-automatic rifle – a weapon with a range of nearly 440 yards – and a scope to magnify its lens.
The Republican presidential candidate’s last publicly scheduled campaign event had been on Saturday evening, on the other side of the country, in the state of Utah.
Residents say Trump spends almost every Sunday at the West Palm Beach golf club when he is not on the campaign trail.
But Secret Service director Ronald Rowe said on Monday that the former president was “not even really supposed to go there”, so agents had to put together a security plan at the last minute.
The foiled plot has left Trump’s neighbours in Palm Beach with pressing questions.
Did the suspect know Trump would be coming to play golf, or was it a lucky guess?
How could he have gone undetected for so long, hiding in the bushes with a rifle?
The suspect escaped the scene in a Nissan car, ditching his backpack of goods and weapon.
A civilian woman was able to take a picture of the fleeing gunman’s licence plate and provide it to investigators, Trump said on Monday night.
The suspect made it less than an hour before officers pulled over his vehicle and ordered him out.
Bodycam footage shows he seemed calm as officers shouted at him to step to the side before handcuffing him without incident.
On Monday morning, the suspect Ryan Routh, 58, appeared in a crowded Palm Beach court, wearing a blue prison jumpsuit and smiling as he chatted with his attorney.
He was charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and one count of possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Routh, a Hawaii resident with a criminal history, had come across the FBI’s radar in 2019 for being a felon in possession of a firearm. The bureau tipped off law enforcement in Honolulu at the time.
While his motive for apparently planning to target Trump has not been revealed, the suspect had said in the past on social media that he voted for the Republican in 2016 before souring on him.
On the perimeter of Trump’s golf course on Monday, bright orange cones, barricades, police cars and officers shielded all corners of the club.
The incident has shocked West Palm Beach and neighbouring towns.
Shelby Stevens, a 52-year-old Trump supporter from West Palm Beach, told the BBC: “No matter how much security you have and everything else, if someone is willing to give their life to take someone else’s, it can happen.”
Cosme Blanco has lived just a few blocks away from the course for most of his life, where he said Trump comes as often as twice a week when he’s not campaigning.
The 61-year-old Trump supporter said the security presence around the golf club is typically not overwhelming. But all that changed on Sunday, when Blanco ran outside five minutes after shots were fired to see helicopters circling the neighbourhood.
“I was concerned. I’m going to be 62 years old and I’ve never seen America change this much,” said the Cuban immigrant.
Blanco said it would not be hard for a suspect to target Trump at his golf course.
Trump travelled there in a motorcade that would have taken about 12 minutes to go from his Mar-a-Lago resort across a bridge overlooking the Lake Worth Lagoon.
“If they see the motorcade coming, I’m sure at that point they know he’s going to play golf – it’s common sense,” Blanco said.
But Anka Palitz, a Palm Beach resident who says she has known Trump personally for years, said Routh’s timing was suspicious.
“He doesn’t play golf every Sunday,” she said. “I think there’s a conspiracy.”
“How was he [the gunman] not seen?” she added.
Palitz, who said she used to go skiing with Trump’s ex-wife, Ivana, said she believed someone must have alerted the suspect that the former president was going to the course that day.
Patricia Pelham, a United Kingdom native who has been living in Florida for 30 years, wonders where the suspect was able to park his car close enough to quickly make his getaway.
“How come there’s not security around the outside?” asked the Briton, who added that she was no supporter of Trump.
Pelham said security measures have increased around Mar-a-Lago on the island of Palm Beach since Trump was injured when a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.
On Monday, police cars lined the roads of the island nearly every half mile, with the 17-acre resort blocked off to visitors.
Authorities have said that the entire golf course would have been surrounded had it been a sitting president of the United States on the green.
Trump’s allies are now calling for the candidate’s protection detail to be urgently beefed up.
Michael Matranga, a former Secret Service agent who worked for former President Barack Obama, said Trump has had better security than many other former presidents, who typically receive less protection than White House incumbents.
For example, he said, former presidents aren’t typically offered counter-sniper teams like Trump.
The Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny since the first attempt on Trump’s life, with the leader of the agency, Kimberly Cheatle, resigning less than two weeks after the rally.
Agency officials have said the Secret Service is short on resources. President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to approve more money for the agency in the coming weeks, saying the Secret Service “needs more help”.
But even with the extra resources, Matranga said agents are forced to contend with a delicate balance of protecting Trump while allowing him to engage with constituents on the campaign trail and “enjoy a round of golf”.
They can’t just “keep him in a bullet proof box”, Matranga said.
Nor does Trump seem to want to be put in one.
In a fundraising email sent on Monday afternoon, he told his supporters: “My resolve is only stronger after another attempt on my life!”
It’s the kind of “tough” attitude that Stevens expects Trump to maintain as he continues to court voters in the weeks leading up to November’s general election.
“The way I see him, he’s not going to want the American people to know that he’d be afraid of going out,” Stevens said.
“I think he’ll still make a presence, not just here but everywhere. I don’t think that’s something he’s going to be shying away from.”
