The US Secret Service has said it shot and killed an armed man who entered President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The intruder was carrying a shotgun and a gas can, according to security officials.
The incident occurred at around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday. The intruder, described as a white male in his early 20s, entered the estate’s secure perimeter. He was confronted by Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy, and “shots were fired by law enforcement during the encounter,” according to a statement released by the agency.
The intruder was pronounced dead at the scene. No security officials were injured. Trump and his wife Melania were not at the estate at the time of the incident, according to the Secret Service. The Sheriff’s Office and the FBI have launched a probe into the incident.
During the altercation with security officials, the intruder “raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” prompting them to open fire, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office told journalists.
The intruder was identified by investigators as Austin Tucker Martin, 21, from North Carolina, Fox News reported, citing an anonymous source not yet authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
His family reported him missing since Saturday afternoon.
Investigators believe he left North Carolina and headed south, picking up a shotgun along the way; they recovered the box for the weapon from his vehicle, Fox News cited Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi as saying.
This was not the first security incident involving Trump. On July 13, 2024, he narrowly survived an attempt on his life during at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attacker, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired multiple rounds, grazing Trump’s ear, killing one rally attendee and injuring several others. The shooter was killed by a counter-sniper team that returned fire.
Two months later, a heavily armed man was spotted outside the US president’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The incident was treated as another assassination attempt against Trump. The would-be assassin, identified as Ryan Routh, 59, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month. Routh was known to have expressed pro-Ukraine views.