09/16/2024–|Last updated: 09/16/202411:05 (Mecca time)
US media reported the name of Ryan Wesley Roth as the gunman who opened fire near former President Donald Trump’s golf course.
US media reported that Roth, 58, was arrested after Secret Service agents “opened fire on a gunman” carrying an AK-47 rifle outside Trump’s private golf course in Florida, where the former president was playing golf on Sunday.
The suspect fled in a black car, but authorities found him after an eyewitness managed to identify him.
CNN and CBS reported that Roth was an independent builder of affordable housing in Hawaii, had a lengthy criminal record and regularly posted articles on politics and current events, sometimes critical of Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
Roth clearly expressed his support for Ukraine after the war against Russia.
“I am ready to travel to Krakow and go to the borders of Ukraine to volunteer, fight and die…” Roth said in a March 2022 article on X.
Agence France-Presse interviewed Roth in kyiv in late April 2022 as he took part in a demonstration in support of Ukrainians under siege in the city of Mariupol.
He said at the time that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is a terrorist and he has to be stopped. So we want everybody in the world to stop what they’re doing and come here now.”
Trump was golfing in West Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago headquarters, when the gunman was spotted at a distance from him.
This is the second time in two months that Trump has been threatened by a gunman. The former president was shot in the ear on July 13 while delivering a speech at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.