The man suspected of opening fire on Republican lawmakers as they played baseball on Wednesday raged against Republican US President Donald Trump on social media and idolized Bernie Sanders, who he saw as the only politician who understood the working class.
A senior US official named the gunman as James T Hodgkinson from the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois. State records showed he was a 66-year-old home inspector. He died from injuries sustained in a shoot-out with Capitol Hill police who were at the scene in Alexandria, Virginia.
He is believed by investigators to have been a person “of strong views,” the US official said, without elaborating.
The Belleville News-Democrat, a local newspaper, posted a photograph of Hodgkinson protesting outside a post office there in 2012, wearing sunglasses and a goatee and holding a homemade placard that read “TAX the Rich.”
Hodgkinson was a member of many anti-Republican groups on Facebook including “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Terminate The Republican Party,” and “Donald Trump is not my President,” his profile showed before it was taken down.
