The Oahu business owner who was arrested Sunday in connection with an alleged attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Florida was seen as a “rogue” player by some people he worked with in Hawaii to build tiny homes for homeless military veterans.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is in custody after the Secret Service spotted a rifle scope pointed toward the course where the former president was golfing Sunday afternoon, according to multiple media outlets. Trump was not hurt 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 Routh was registered to vote in North Carolina and voted this spring in that state’s Democratic primary.
In Hawaii he registered his Camp Box Honolulu, a company that builds small storage structures, as a Hawaii business in January 2019 but let its business registration lapse last January.
Routh was known, especially on the Windward side of Oahu where he lived, for building storage units and tiny houses. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser quoted him in 2019 when he pledged to help build tiny homes for homeless people to live in in Kalaeloa as part of the kauhale concept, pushed by then-Lt. Gov. Josh Green and Nani Medeiros, then-executive director of the nonprofit building group HomeAid Hawaii.
While attending a November 2019 launch ceremony for the project, Routh told the Star-Advertiser, “As a community, if we can all come together and put our resources together, it would be extremely beneficial. All of us are tired of seeing the homeless people all over the island with nowhere to go.”
He told the Star-Advertiser that he was particularly inspired to provide housing for “the ones that have pets and animals. The vast majority of these people are asking for a plot of land that they can call their own.”
HomeAid Hawaii Executive Director Kimo Carvalho, who took over leadership of the nonprofit after Medeiros resigned, said he conducted an assessment of the nonprofit’s partners shortly after coming on board in 2023 and cut ties with Routh.
“He was involved in (the Kalaeloa) project with my predecessor, and since then I have not connected with him at all. We have been exclusive with who we have partnered with. We are not asking for broad help anymore. We are being a little bit more exclusive with who we ask,” Carvalho said, “primarily for reasons like this. Because we are doing work with government, we have to be a lot more diligent in vetting contractors, donors and supporters.”
Carvalho said he was not aware of any of Routh’s affiliations or political views, but described him as “radical” from a business standpoint.
“There’s been a few of those, actually, in the building industry. They are very rogue in terms of doing things the way that they want to do things. For us, we are very coordinated on maintaining a low level of risk,” he said.
Carvalho said it was clear that Routh wanted to donate but did not want to collaborate with the team.
“For me it was like an obvious ‘I don’t understand who would want to work with you,’” he said.
Investigators showed up Sunday at the Kaaawa home that Routh listed as his business address in his Hawaii business registration documents. The home is owned by Kathleen Shaffer, who according to public records shares the address with Routh and has shared other addresses with him in the past.
Neighbors said a woman had been at the home earlier but left before investigators and media arrived.
The Star-Advertiser saw at least three investigators walk up to the side door and front window of the Kamehameha Highway home Sunday afternoon, but it did not appear that anyone was there and they left.
Law enforcement sources told the Star-Advertiser that Routh has an active Hawaii driver’s license with the same Kamehameha Highway address. They also said he has no arrest or criminal record nor a registered firearm in Hawaii. He had some traffic violations in Hawaii, according to court records.
His Social Security number was issued in North Carolina, the sources said.
The Star-Advertiser was unable to reach Routh or Shaffer but spoke to neighbors near their home.
“That’s crazy, super crazy,” said Routh’s neighbor David Stant after hearing about the incident.
He said Routh was “real mellow, low-key … quiet.”
Neighbor Easto Trinin also expressed surprised at Sunday’s events, saying Routh was a nice guy who even helped with some carpentry at the Trinins’ home.
Routh’s eldest son, Oran, told CNN via text that Routh was “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man.”
The son wrote, “I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent.”
But other media have reported that Ryan Routh has a criminal history in North Carolina that includes convictions between 2002 and 2010 for possession of weapons of mass destruction, carrying a concealed gun, hit-and-run, possession of stolen goods and resisting law enforcement, among other charges.
Honolulu police have records of four interactions with Routh, law enforcement sources told the Star-Advertiser. Two interactions came in 2019 and two in 2021.
In 2019, Routh and two others were allegedly squatting on property in Kaaawa when the property owner called to have them removed.
Routh also reported lost property to police and was involved in a “miscellaneous public case,” a classification police use to cover interactions with citizens that don’t fit into a particular statute.
In 2021, Routh reported being the victim in an alleged third-degree assault case. Routh was working as a handyman and argued with a resident living on the property that Routh was working on, sources said. Routh alleged that he was punched in the nose, but no arrests were made.
He also had traffic citations in Hawaii, court records show.
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 removed hours after Sunday’s arrest; however, The New York Times reported that Routh had made a series of posts on X in 2020 expressing admiration for then-U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination that year, saying that “she will tirelessly negotiate peace deals in Syria, Afghanistan, and all turmoil zones.”
Multiple news outlets reported that Routh’s social media posts in 2016 expressed support for Trump’s bid for the White House.
The Times also cited a May 2020 post on X where Routh invited Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, to Hawaii for a vacation and offered to act as “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes between the two nations.
Routh posted pictures of himself in 2023 on his LinkedIn page. He was wearing a patriotic-looking suit and tie in the pictures that were captioned, “In DC and Kyiv to provide soldiers for the war effort.”
The Times, which interviewed Routh in 2023 when he was in Washington, D.C., reported that he said he was there to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission, “for two hours” to help push for more support for Ukraine.
Routh told the Times that he was seeking recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. Routh said he planned to move the Afghan soldiers, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine.
The Times reported that violent rhetoric appeared in Routh’s posts on social media site X following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE,” he wrote.
He also wrote several published letters to the editor in 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 in his emails included links to websites in support of Ukraine in its war with Russia. The signature also included the comment, “Coalition forces spend 3 trillion dollars and 15 years training 300,000 soldiers that we must use to defeat Russia.”
Newsweek reported Sunday that Routh had spoken about his efforts to recruit volunteers for the International Legion Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, which was one of the contacts listed in the signature at the end of Routh’s emails to the Star-Advertiser.
Newsweek reported that Routh said in a June 2022 interview with Newsweek Romania, “The question as far as why I’m here … to me, a lot of the other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good vs. evil. This is a storybook, you know, any movie we’ve ever watched, this is definitely evil against good.”
The FBI’s Honolulu Division forwarded a statement saying that the “FBI is investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former President Trump,” and told the Star-Advertiser that it was forwarding additional queries to its national press office in Washington, D.C.
It’s still unclear how Sunday’s incident transpired given that Trump’s Sunday schedule had not been made public.
Star-Advertiser reporters Peter Boylan, Leila Fujimori and Dan Nakaso, and photographer Craig Kojima contributed to this report.
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