US Secret Service Kills Man Trying to Access Trump’s Florida Home

Trump was in Washington at the time of the incident, which authorities said occurred around 01:30 (06:30 GMT).

The Secret Service said the suspect, a man in his early 20s, was seen carrying a shotgun and a fuel canister at the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago property.

Agents confronted the man and told him to drop his gun, but he raised his gun.

“The only words we said to him were ‘let the stuff go,'” Palm Beach County sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters.

“At this time he put down the gas can and raised his rifle into a firing position,” Bradshaw said.

A deputy and two Secret Service agents then shot him. The man was pronounced dead and no US officers were injured.

The Secret Service said it had no one under protection at Mar-a-Lago at the time.

Bradshaw, the Palm Beach sheriff, identified the gunman as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin, who lived in a small town in North Carolina about 700 miles (1,127 kilometers) north of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Washington Post.

Martin was an illustrator of landscapes and golf courses and had an older sister who died three years ago at age 21, although the obituaries did not list the cause of death, the Miami Herald reported.

– Political violence is increasing –

Trump, who often spends weekends at Mar-a-Lago, has been the target of many assassination plans or attempts.

Earlier this month, Ryan Routh, 59, who planned to assassinate Trump at a Florida golf course in September 2024, two months before the US election, was sentenced to life in prison.

Routh’s planned attack on Trump comes two months after an assassination attempt on the Republican leader in Pennsylvania; where 20-year-old Matthew Crooks fired several shots during a rally, one of which grazed Trump’s right ear.

This attack, in which a rally attendee was killed, marked a turning point in Trump’s return to power. A now-famous photo emerged of a bloodied Trump raising his fist towards the crowd and urging his followers to “fight, fight”.

Crooks was instantly shot dead by security forces and the cause remains unknown.

Political violence has increased in a deeply polarized country where political discourse has become increasingly aggressive and provocative.

In September last year, right-wing influencer and staunch Trump ally Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during an event at a college in Utah.

Before that, in June, a masked gunman killed Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home. Another elected official and his wife were also targeted and seriously injured.

And the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was mentioned as a presidential candidate last year, was set on fire in April in an alleged assassination attempt.

The U.S. Secret Service is responsible for the security of the president, vice president, and former presidents and their families, as well as leading election candidates and visiting foreign heads of state.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats for the ongoing partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Secret Service.

Democrats oppose any new funding for DHS until major changes are implemented in how the Trump administration conducts its massive and often violent deportation campaign.