Posted on 09/21/2024 5:59:55 AM PDT by BenLurkin
GREENSBORO, N.C. — The man accused of pointing a rifle into the golf course where former President Donald Trump was playing last weekend, was known in his hometown as something of a bad actor.
“Weird” is how one of Ryan Routh’s former neighbors in Greensboro described him. She told reporters he once had a horse in his house and that he also kept guns.
A man, who like the first neighbor asked not to be identified for fear of being associated with Routh, says he didn’t know the 58 year old well but got a similar vibe.
“I mean, [he] seemed to be pretty strange,” he said. “You never know who's in the neighborhood,” his wife added.
But if Routh’s neighbors didn’t know him well, the police sure did.
“We were on a first-name basis,” said Eric Rasecke, a now-retired Greensboro police officer whose beat included the areas where Routh lived and worked.
“I’ve had well over 100 encounters with Ryan,” Rasecke said.
It started with traffic violations, like driving with an expired registration.
“You know it wasn’t expired by a month or two. It was by years,” Rasecke said. “And he had no insurance on his vehicles, and his license was always suspended.”
Rasecke remembers Routh as a cocky guy with a grandiose view of himself and a sense that he was "above the law."
“He would always be running his mouth,” Rasecke said, but always stopped short of any explicit threat. “He would give me a smirk and comment like, ‘Oh, I hope you’re well,' before adding something like, 'You know, life is short, and you never know.' ”
As time passed, Rasecke says he watched Routh rapidly unravel, from a guy who was once a solid citizen who owned and operated a successful roofing business in town and who once received a commendation from the police for stopping a woman from being raped.
“Through the years, his appearance went from clean cut and well-groomed to becoming very thin, his eyes basically withdrawn, his body movements shaky," Rasecke said, "and [he had] a paranoid attitude very indicative of drug usage.”
Routh was never convicted of any drug charges, but Resecke believes drug use was driving the downward spiral. And he said Routh would always blame everyone else for his troubles.
“It was always ‘the city is picking on me. The police department is picking on me,’” Resecke recalls. “Everyone was against him, trying to get him, trying to ruin his business, trying to ruin his life, trying to condemn his house.”
“Oh my God, memories!” Rasecke exclaims as he returns to where Routh’s home once stood. It has since been razed, and the lot is now empty.
Rasecke remembers Routh living there in a small, single story, two-bedroom home, where he was also housing a half dozen or so workers from his roofing company.
“It was very dingy and dirty,” Rasecke recalls. “There was mattresses on the floor, there was trash on the floor. It stunk. It was nasty.”
Routh had built a metal addition on the back of the house, where more workers lived, Rasecke says, and across the street, he ran electricity and water to a large windowless trailer, where workers lived as well.
The trailer is still there today, inside a chain link fence, along with Routh’s red Jeep, a rusty bike, wrecked furniture, tools and heaps of metal and building materials.
To Rasecke, the scene is like a catalog of Routh’s crimes.
“He didn’t have this tarp on the front until after I caught him with the stolen vehicle in there," Rasecke said, pointing to the junk heap. He then spins around toward the other side of the street. “And there is where the hit and run vehicle was parked, directly in front of his house."
“This is where he drove to and where our stand-off was,” Rasecke said.
That incident started with a traffic stop in 2002. Rasecke recalls that when an officer spotted a machine gun in Routh's car, Routh became irate, sped away and barricaded himself inside his business with explosives. Routh was convicted of possession of a weapon of mass destruction, a felony.
Meantime, Routh was also getting himself into a heap of legal trouble in his business dealings.
“It’s never good when a sheriff says, 'We know this guy,' ” said trial lawyer Howie Labiner. “That’s usually a giveaway that something is not going well over there.”
Indeed, Labiner would come to find out for himself in 2008, after he won a $28,000 lawsuit against Routh for a client who was also in the roofing business. The sheriff went multiple times to Routh’s home and business to collect the debt, Labiner says, but was never successful. He says the sheriff described the building as a fortress. Labiner says Routh has still not paid up. And he says his client’s case was not unique.
“There are three-plus pages of court cases against Mr. Routh and his roofing companies,” Labiner said. “This was not his first rodeo, let’s put it that way.”
Routh’s more recent exploits are certainly more outlandish, but as Rasecke sees it, they reflect the same kind of duplicity and self-aggrandizing that he saw in Routh years ago.
For example, he points to Routh’s posturing as a military recruiter to help save Ukraine. Routh was promoting himself as a something of a savior of the Ukranian people -- as well as democracy itself.
“To me … this is definitely evil against good,” Routh told Newsweek in 2022, adding, “It seems asinine that we have a leader in a country that does not understand … basic moral values.”
In the article, Routh blasted world leaders for not sending military help, saying, “We're going to have to elect new leaders … that have a backbone and have the fortitude to say, 'Hey, we're not going to tolerate this type of behavior.' ” But meantime, Routh said, civilians have to “get off the couch” and “pick up the torch.”
“Are we going to stand for humanity, for human rights, for everything that is good in the world or are we just going to ignore it?” he said, adding, “It blows my mind that I'm standing here alone without thousands of people from every country, from everywhere. We need everybody here."
Ukraine's International Legion denies Routh’s claims that he was working for them.
Months later, in a self-published Amazon e-book titled Ukraine’s Unwinnable War, Routh questioned why Russian President Vladimir Putin had not been assassinated, and suggested Trump might deserve the same fate.
When Routh was arrested in Sunday's alleged assassination attempt in Florida, Rasecke, the retired police officer, says it was shocking to him. But only sort of.
“I mean, considering how things were progressively going downhill with him, it does make sense,” Rasecke said. “The dots connect. And I can see where this could have actually happened."
He will be very popular in the cell block. The boys will treat him like the queen he thinks he is. I hope he has plenty of Vaseline for those long days and nights in the cell block.😖
Which Federal agency gave him his “get out of jail free” card.
Didn’t Sherrif De Santis revoke it by filing state charges?
Sounds like law enforcement in his town was on the scale of Mayberry.
Next time you should read the article fully. He had barricaded himself in his house and was defending it with EXPLOSIVES.
Routh answered that question. He said his WIFE paid for everything.
An attempted murder charge seems appropriate, even if the facts don’t unequivocally point toward Trump being his specific target.
Of course, Routh is a bit of a grandstander, and somewhat off his rocker, such that he may end up admitting proudly that he was laying in wait specifically for Orange Man Bad.
Also what I was about to write... talk about minimizing things. Can you imagine if a Trump supporter was caught taking this action toward Kommieala? The headlines would be abundantly sensationalized!
Housebroken, I assume….
Gotcha. Thanks.
NPR wasn’t evading the point. Not that they wouldn’t try, but in this case they were correct.
Trump was not in view yet. the rifle was leaning against the fence with the front of the barrel sticking through. Someone saw the tip of the rifle (SS claims it was them) and as Routh Ran away, an SS agent started firing at a target he could not clearly see and that was moving and could have killed a friendly. Routh escaped, got to his car and fled. A local got his license plate number and gave it to the local LE. Routh was pulled over and he was quickly and quietly arrested. He cooperated with LE and did not resist arrest. Routh was then taken to local jail. He was then made available to SS.
SO,,,, since he didn’t fire any shots (didn’t have the weapon in his hands and it may not have even been loaded),how would YOU describe what happened(legally) ?
Early reports said AK-47
That is exactly what De Santis said the State of Florida preparing to file. The SS can only prosecute him on lesser charges, like illegal possession/no registration on the rifle.
People working for the Feds get an attitude sometimes.
58 years old. Too young for Viet Nam....old enough to have served after 2001. Yet, no military experience at all from what I’ve read.
Early reports were wrong.
One of our FREEPERS had his son(expert) identify it as an SKS Variant. An SKS Sport (Sportster?) with a modified stock, IIRC.
The Secret Service agent who shot Routh out of his hiding place in the bushes can testify that Routh pointed his gun out of the bushes and toward the golf course.
This would appear to constitute a significant step (perhaps what would have been the very penultimate step had the Secret service not intervened) toward murdering at least someone on the course.
LE did their job. He had a Rap Sheet a mile long (meaning he got arrested repeatedly). The Mayberry role would have fallen to the JUDICIAL SYSTEM.
Please see #’s 26 and 36 and perhaps respond? Thx: OGINJ
𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘈𝘒-47
𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨.
𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘍𝘙𝘌𝘌𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘚 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘯(𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘵) 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘺 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘒𝘚 𝘝𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵.
I can see why early reports identified the rifle as an AK, early pictures of the hide were pretty bad, and you could barely make out the rifle. AK mags have a distinct profile, as well as footprint, but aftermarket SKS magazines with the same general shape can be purchase. I personally think high cap magazines on an SKS, or Mini 14/30 for that matter, look ridiculous.
𝘈𝘯 𝘚𝘒𝘚 𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 (𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳?)
I also believe the term you may be looking for is “sporterized”. One of those rifles I believe looks better in its original stock, but to each their own.
The SS Agent COULD testify to that, but is that what really happened ?
Are we to believe that Routh shoved the barrel of his rifle through the fence and was waiving it around, drawing attention to himself, before the supposed target was even in view ?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.