A neighbor of Ryan Routh, the reported person of interest detained by authorities in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, told a local news station in North Carolina that the man was “a little cuckoo” and owned a lot of guns—but still expressed disbelief that he would do anything violent.
“I mean I didn’t think he would go that far. I knew he was a little cuckoo, but assassinating the president? I mean he’s going to be going away for a long time,” an anonymous former neighbor in Greensboro, North Carolina told local station Fox 8. “I just can’t believe it.”
However, she also said that Routh had a lot of firearms at his North Carolina home. “I’ve seen the guns myself and all, and, yeah, they had a lot of guns and stuff over there, and, yeah, a lot of people were afraid of him back in the day,” she said.
The neighbor said Routh moved to Hawaii earlier this year, but before leaving he hired her son to help him move, gave her a Hawaiian shirt as a gift, and embraced her on his last day.
“I thought he was just living the life in Hawaii with the girlfriend and all, so for him to be assassinating the president, that’s just crazy.”
Routh’s son, Oren Routh, also expressed disbelief that his “caring father and honest, hardworking man” would do anything like that.
“I do not know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope that things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little that I have heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent,” Oren told CNN.
