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“Through the years, his appearance went from clean cut and well-groomed to becoming very thin, his eyes basically withdrawn, his body movements shaky," Rasecke said, "and [he had] a paranoid attitude very indicative of drug usage.”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."
Thank you. I am no gun expert, was just passing on information I had read that seemed the most accurate. I think that you are correct. Sporterized.
I’m assuming that ‘Sporterized’ means .... What can I do that’s cheap and will impress a 12 year old.
So when will he be charged with attempted assassination? Currently he’s only being held on gun charges? Another probation incoming?
It would fit his past pattern of behavior.
Very good question.
The way This Guy imagined it upon hearing the account of the the SS agent in question (the one who opened fire), it was exactly as you’ve described: “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.”
That would appear to be a sufficient progression toward murdering at least someone on the golf course.
OTOH, if it was just the tip of the barrel of a propped-up rifle (i.e., leaning against the fence) that was sticking through the chain link, would that be sufficient?
The SS agent’s reaction may be instructive in this regard. He sensed imminent danger to President Trump, immediately drew his weapon, and began firing. The level of danger to Trump that the SS agent perceived, as it turned out, was the exact level of danger to Trump that was present. It’s hard to imagine an impartial jury not being amenable to a skillful prosecutor’s arguments to this effect.
I have. Thank you for your responses.
That would take a huge imagination because I don't think any Trump supporter has even contemplated using that kind of action to defeat her in the upcoming election.
Now, her staff(especially former staff) might.
NPR writes at a elementary school level.
You know, if in fact the gun was propped up against the chain link fence when the SS Agent caught sight of the tip of the gun barrel, Routh could very well have been in the very final stages of tracking his prey. Then, once Routh determined his prey was within high-percentage accuracy shooting range, he would have had the gun ready to go, and within easy reach, enabling him quickly to grab it, stick the barrel through the fence once again at a slightly lower height, point it in the general direction of Trump, get set in prone firing position, take final aim with the aid of his scope, and start firing.
WHAT happened to the horse???
He is your typical narcissistic progressive. Just look at his support for Ukraine, that is a tell for stupidity.
Routh’s handlers pumped him up with money and ideas.
In Theory. In Practice? There is very little remaining of the second amendment. I will not speak in defense of Routh on this point.
Just try getting into a shootout with police when one has a machine gun in possession. The "ordinary" citizen will get serious jail time and fines that will impoverish him for life.
Routh did not get any of that. It screams "recruited as a low-level asset by one of the Federal Agencies". His subsequent antics as a world-traveller and erstwhile recruiter of mercenaries for the war in Ukraine points in the same direction.
And where did he get the money to do all of that? He lived in Hawaii, supposedly on an annual income of less than $30,000.
I am not concerned with his "Second amendment rights". I am concerned with mine.
Is his wife's last name Shaeffer (sp?) or Routh? I've read the woman with the money had a business address in McClean VA (SeeAyeEi location), but Ryan Routh's twitter record mentions a woman named Shaeffer (sp?) who worked with Victoria's Secret for decades (and not the McClean VA company. In the mention he's complaining that she was fired over nothing after 3 decades at the company.
Well, if a police officer has had over 100 "encounters" with a guy and he's not in prison or otherwise dealt with, I'd say Routh was correct.
Oh boy! Facts! BUMP!!!
;-)
Drugs and alcohol.
It’s always someone else’s fault.
He was just born in America, which was bad luck for ordinary Americans, but very good luck for Prog Socialist Democrats.
Sounds like he hired a lot of illegal aliens.
Doesn’t mean recently.
Sounds like it was a shambles already, years ago when he still lived there.
He acted like he was above the law because he was above the law. 74 arrests, and not one day in jail? Someone was protecting him.
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