Washington: Police shot and killed a man in his early 20s who was trying to break into Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida armed with a shotgun and gas can, authorities said.
The man had breached the secure perimeter on the north side of the property at about 1.30am on Sunday (Florida time) when he was confronted by two Secret Service agents and a local police officer.
Trump was not in the area at the time – he was at the White House in Washington, where he hosted a ball for state governors.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw said the Secret Service agents and sheriff’s deputy ordered the man to “drop the items”. He then put down the gas can and “raised the shotgun to a shooting position”, Bradshaw said.
“At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons and neutralised the threat. He is deceased at the scene.”
There were no injuries to law enforcement. Authorities did not immediately release the man’s name, pending notification of next of kin. They described him as a white male in his early 20s.
But the Associated Press identified him as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin, citing a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss details of the investigation.
Trump has faced numerous threats to his life, including an assassination attempt while he was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the 2024 election campaign.
On that occasion, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks grazed Trump’s ear and killed another rally attendee, before being shot dead by the Secret Service.
Months later, Ryan Wesley Routh was caught aiming a rifle through the bushes at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida while Trump was on the green. Routh was later found and arrested, and earlier this month was sentenced to life in prison.
Last year, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking on campus at a university in Utah. Melissa Hortman, a Democratic politician in the state of Minnesota, was assassinated alongside her husband in June in another act of politically motivated violence.
Trump was yet to comment on Sunday’s incident, but his deputy chief-of-staff Stephen Miller noted Democrats refused to pass a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service, because of concerns about immigration agencies such as ICE.
“Never before in history has federal law enforcement been purposefully defunded,” Miller said on X.
With AP, Reuters
Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.