STUART, Fla. — The man arrested after an apparent attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump followed sheriff’s directions and was taken into custody without incident, video released Monday showed.
The Martin County Sheriff’s Office made the video available less than 24 hours after the gunfire near Trump’s Florida golf course, where he had been playing.
Body camera video showed several armed police or sheriff’s deputies confronting Ryan Wesley Routh, 58.
“Driver, take two steps to your right! Take two steps to your right! Driver, go straight back, keep walking,” an unidentified deputy can be heard and seen yelling at the suspect.
That’s when a sunglass-wearing man with a T-shirt pulled over his head, exposing his midsection, comes into the camera’s range with his hands up.
The suspect had been told to pull his shirt up to show he had no concealed weapons, Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told NBC News.
Two law enforcement agents then grab the man’s hands and handcuff him, the video showed.
The deputy yelling instructions was the first Martin County deputy to spot Routh’s car, leading to the capture, Snyder said.
Once Routh was taken into custody, the arresting deputy stayed with him with his body camera activated in case he made any incriminating statements, Snyder said.
Routh has been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, officials said.
He was arrested Sunday driving on Interstate 95. A witness who spotted Routh and his car was crucial to helping law enforcement find him quickly, officials said,
“If the witness had not seen him, taken a picture of the car, given us the tag … I would say he would be home resting having a margarita right about now,” Snyder told NBC News.
Law enforcement officers benefited from Routh’s not knowing deputies were on to him, Snyder added.
“He was just driving with the flow of traffic. Yeah, I think that he may have thought he got away with it,” Snyder told reporters Monday. “Of course, he couldn’t have known that there was a witness who really did the right thing, took a picture of him, took a picture of the tag. And he was just going to drive himself back to wherever he came from.”
Snyder said he wants to know how an armed man could have been within several hundred feet of a former president.
“I think that’s the question the FBI, Secret Service are laser-focused on today,” Snyder said.
Jesse Kirsch and Carmen Gonzales reported from Stuart and David K. Li from New York City.
Juliette Arcodia contributed.
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