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An armed man has been shot dead after entering the secure perimeter of US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, the Secret Service has said.
The man was carrying a shotgun and fuel can when he was stopped and shot by Secret Service agents and a sheriff’s deputy, authorities said.
The incident happened around 01:30 ET (06:30 GMT) on Sunday morning, when the president was in Washington DC.
Trump, in his first comments on the shooting, said on Monday that he is a target because he is a “consequential” president, noting that he has “got a lot of people gunning for me, don’t I?”
“You know, you read about all these crazy shooters, but they only go after consequential presidents, not inconsequential presidents,” he said at an unrelated immigration event at the White House.
Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy, two American presidents who were killed in office by assassins, were both “consequential”, he continued.
“They said they only go after consequential. So maybe I want to be a little bit less consequential,” he joked, leading to laughter from the audience.
The suspect has been named as 21-year-old Austin T Martin of Cameron, North Carolina, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS.
His family in North Carolina had reported him missing in the early hours of Sunday morning, the Moore County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement to the BBC.
The missing persons information has since been turned over to federal authorities, the sheriff’s office said.
They added that the department had no record of prior history concerning Martin and that it was not involved in the Florida investigation.
Officials are looking into whether he bought the gun along the driving route he took from North Carolina to Florida, according to CBS.
US Secret Service agents fired at him after they saw him “unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Mar-a-Lago early this morning”, agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi posted on X on Sunday.
The suspect “was observed by the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago property carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can”, the agency said in a statement.
The man was then shot after refusing orders, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said.
“The only words that we said to him was ‘drop the items’, which means the gas can and the shotgun,” Bradshaw told a news conference.
“At which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” he said.
At that point, agents fired their weapons to “neutralise the threat”, Bradshaw added.
The officers were wearing body cameras and no law enforcement officers were injured, he said.
Bradshaw said that he did not know whether the suspect’s gun was loaded, saying that will form part of an investigation the FBI will be assisting with.
US Secret Service Director Sean Curran travelled to Florida on Sunday for “after-actions” and had “reinvigorated operational communication and agency response to critical incidents”, the agency said in a post on X.
Security at Mar-a-Lago is extremely tight, with an outer cordon of local Palm Beach sheriff’s deputies and an inner one maintained by the Secret Service. Visitors are searched, and cars and bags are swept by dogs and metal detectors.
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Those who knew Martin expressed their shock in interviews with US media.
Braeden Fields, his cousin, told AP News that Martin was “a good kid” who worked at a golf course and did not know how to use a gun.
“I wouldn’t believe he would do something like this. It’s mind-blowing,” he told the outlet.
Fields described the family as “big Trump supporters”, but that his cousin did not discuss politics.
Other US media including the Miami Herald said Martin had not declared a party affiliation.
One of Martin’s friends, Dustin Rollins, 20, told the New York Times that the man was “probably one of the kinder souls that I’ve actually ever met”, and that he had struggled with the death of his sister three years earlier.
The suspect was reportedly also an enthusiastic artist who specialised in illustrating scenes of golf courses.
Trump has been the target of several assassination plots or attempts.
In July 2024, Trump was shot in the ear as he stood in front of crowds in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bystander was killed and two were injured in the shooting.
The gunman, 20-year-old Matthew Crooks, was immediately shot and killed by security forces and his motive remains unknown.
Months later, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle sticking out of bushes at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
The man, later identified as Ryan Routh, fled but was caught. The 59-year-old was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month for attempting to assassinate the president.
During an appearance on Fox Business after the fatal incident, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused the political left of “normalising” political violence, citing the two attempts on Trump’s life in 2024,
“Two would-be assassins dead, one in jail for life, and this venom coming from the other side,” Bessent said, adding: “They are normalising this violence. It’s got to stop.”
Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
