Alleged attempted murder Arrested man lived in Hawaii

The Oahu business owner arrested in Florida on Sunday in connection with an alleged assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was viewed as a “renegade” actor by some people he worked with in Hawaii to build tiny homes for homeless war veterans.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is in custody after the Secret Service discovered a rifle scope aimed at the golf course where the former president was golfing on Sunday afternoon, according to multiple media reports. Trump was not injured in the incident.

Routh, who is originally from North Carolina and owns property there, moved to Hawaii around 2018, according to his LinkedIn page. Tribune News Service reported that Routh is registered to vote in North Carolina and voted in the state's Democratic primary this spring.

In Hawaii, he registered his company Camp Box Honolulu, which builds small storage buildings, as a Hawaiian company in January 2019, but let the business registration expire last January.

Routh was best known for building storage units and tiny homes, especially on the Windward side of Oahu, where he lived. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser quoted him in 2019 as pledging to help build tiny homes for the homeless in Kalaeloa as part of the Kauhale concept pushed by then-Lieutenant Governor Josh Green and Nani Medeiros, then-executive director of the nonprofit construction group HomeAid Hawaii.

At a launch ceremony for the project in November 2019, Routh told the Star-Advertiser, “If we could all come together as a community and pool our resources, it would be extremely beneficial. We are all tired of seeing the homeless across the island with nowhere to go.”

He told the Star Advertiser that he was particularly inspired by “providing housing for those who have pets and animals. The vast majority of these people want a piece of land that they can call their own.”

Kimo Carvalho, executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, who took over as head of the nonprofit after Medeiros resigned, said he conducted an evaluation of the nonprofit's partners shortly after joining in 2023 and severed ties with Routh.

“He was involved in the (Kalaeloa) project with my predecessor, and since then I have had no contact with him at all. We have very few partners. We no longer ask for wholesale help. We are a bit more exclusive in choosing who we ask for help,” Carvalho said, “mainly for reasons like this. Since we work with the government, we have to be much more careful in vetting contractors, donors and supporters.”

Carvalho said he knew nothing of Routh's connections or political views, but described him as “radical” from a business perspective.

“There are actually quite a few of them in the construction industry. They are very self-serving when it comes to doing things the way they want. We are very careful to keep the risk level low,” he said.

Carvalho said it was clear that Routh wanted to donate but did not want to work with the team.

“For me it was an obvious 'I don't understand who would want to work with you,'” he said.

On Sunday, investigators showed up at the Kaaawa home that Routh listed as his business address on his Hawaiian business registration documents. The home belongs to Kathleen Shaffer, who, according to public records, has the same address as Routh and has shared other addresses with him in the past.

Neighbors said a woman had been in the house earlier but left before investigators and media representatives arrived.

The Star-Advertiser saw at least three investigators walk to the side door and front window of the Kamehameha Highway home on Sunday afternoon, but when no one appeared to be there, they left.

Law enforcement sources told the Star-Advertiser that Routh has a valid Hawaii driver's license with the same address on Kamehameha Highway. They also said he has no arrests or criminal record and does not own a registered firearm in Hawaii. Court records show he has committed a number of traffic violations in Hawaii.

His Social Security number was issued in North Carolina, the sources said.

The Star-Advertiser could not reach Routh or Shaffer, but spoke with neighbors near their home.

“This is crazy, totally crazy,” said Routh's neighbor David Stant after hearing about the incident.

He said Routh was “really gentle, reserved … quiet.”

His neighbor Easto Trinin also expressed surprise at Sunday's events and said Routh was a nice guy who even helped with some carpentry work in the Trinins' house.

Routh's eldest son Oran told CNN via text message that Routh was “a loving and caring father and an honest, hard-working man.”

The son wrote: “I don't know what happened in Florida and I hope things were just blown out of proportion because from what little I've heard, it doesn't sound like the man I know would do anything crazy, let alone violent.”

However, other media reported that Ryan Routh already had a criminal record in North Carolina. Between 2002 and 2010, he was convicted of, among other things, possession of weapons of mass destruction, carrying a concealed firearm, hit-and-run, possession of stolen goods and resisting police.

Honolulu police have records of four interactions with Routh, law enforcement sources told the Star-Advertiser. Two interactions occurred in 2019 and two in 2021.

In 2019, Routh and two others were allegedly occupying a property in Kaaawa when the property owner called and asked them to remove it.

Routh also reported lost items to police and was involved in an “other public case,” a classification police use to cover interactions with citizens that do not fall under a specific law.

In 2021, Routh claimed to be the victim of an alleged third-degree assault. Routh worked as a handyman and got into an argument with a resident of the property where Routh worked, sources said. Routh claimed he was punched in the nose, but no arrests were made.

According to court records, he also committed traffic violations in Hawaii.

Routh was active on social media and appeared to have profiles on X, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Public access to the Facebook and X profiles was blocked hours after the arrest on Sunday. However, The New York Times reported that Routh had made a series of posts on X in 2020 expressing admiration for then-US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination that same year, saying that “she will tirelessly negotiate peace deals in Syria, Afghanistan and all troubled areas.”

Several news outlets reported that Routh expressed support for Trump's White House bid in his social media posts in 2016.

The Times also cited a May 2020 post on X in which Routh invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to vacation in Hawaii and offered to serve as an “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes between the two nations.

Routh posted pictures of himself in 2023 on his LinkedIn page. In the pictures, he wore a patriotic-looking suit and tie with the caption, “In DC and Kyiv to provide soldiers for the war effort.”

The Times, which interviewed Routh in 2023 while he was in Washington DC, reported that he said he was there to meet “for two hours” with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the so-called Helsinki Commission, to advocate for more support for Ukraine.

Routh told the Times he is looking for recruits for Ukraine among Afghan soldiers who have fled the Taliban. Routh said he plans to move the Afghan soldiers, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine.

The Times reported that Routh's posts on social media site X contained violent rhetoric following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER, FIGHT AND DIE,” he wrote.

He also wrote several published letters to the editor of the Star-Advertiser between 2018 and April 2024. The topics he chose were typically local issues such as graffiti, the Haiku Stairs and potholes.

However, his signature on the emails included links to websites supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. The signature also included the comment: “Coalition forces are spending $3 trillion over 15 years to train the 300,000 troops we must deploy to defeat Russia.”

Newsweek reported Sunday that Routh spoke about his efforts to recruit volunteers for the International Legion Defense of Ukraine, a unit of the Ukrainian ground forces, which was one of the contacts listed in the signature at the bottom of Routh's emails to the Star-Advertiser.

Newsweek reported that Routh said in an interview with Newsweek Romania in June 2022: “The question of why I'm here… for me, a lot of the other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. It's about good versus evil. This is a fairy tale, you know, every movie we've ever seen is definitely about evil versus good.”

The FBI's Honolulu division forwarded a statement saying that the “FBI is investigating an apparent attempted assassination of former President Trump” and told the Star-Advertiser that it was referring further inquiries to its national press office in Washington, DC.

Since Trump's schedule for Sunday was not made public, it is still unclear how Sunday's incident occurred.

Star-Advertiser reporters Peter Boylan, Leila Fujimori and Dan Nakaso and photographer Craig Kojima contributed to this report.