MIAMI, Feb 23 — US Secret Service agents fatally shot a man armed with a shotgun who breached the security perimeter of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Trump was in Washington at the time of the incident, which officials said happened around 1.30 am (0630 GMT).

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

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

“The only words that we said to him was ‘drop the items,’” Palm Beach County sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters.

“At which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” Bradshaw said.

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

The Secret Service said no one under its protection was present in Mar-a-Lago at the time.

Bradshaw, the Palm Beach sheriff, identified the shooter as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin, a resident of a small town in North Carolina about 700 miles (1127 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 the age of 21, though obituaries did not provide a cause of death, the Miami Herald reported.

Political violence rising 

Trump, who often spends his weekends in Mar-a-Lago, has been the target of several assassination plots or attempts.

Earlier this month, Ryan Routh, 59, who plotted 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 came 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 them grazing Trump’s right ear.

That attack, in which a rallygoer was killed, proved to be a turning point in Trump’s return to power. It yielded a now famous photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist to the crowd and urging his followers to “fight, fight.”

Crooks was immediately shot and killed by security forces and his motive remains unknown.

Political violence has escalated in a deeply polarized country where the political discourse has become increasingly aggressive and inflammatory.

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

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

And Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro—touted last year as a presidential hopeful—had his home set alight in April in an alleged assassination attempt.

The US Secret Service is responsible for the safety of the president, vice president and former presidents, and their families, as well as major election candidates and visiting foreign heads of state.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats for an 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 the way the Trump administration conducts its massive and often violent deportation campaign. — AFP