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The U.S. Secret Service said their agents and a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputy shot a man by the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago club who had a shotgun and fuel can.
AP
An armed man who got onto the property of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach was shot dead overnight by U.S. Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputy, the agencies said.
A federal source familiar with the investigation identified the man as Austin Tucker Martin, a 21-year-old from North Carolina.
Rafael Barros, special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Florida, said President Trump wasn’t at Mar-a-Lago. According to the White House’s weekend schedule, the president remained in Washington this weekend.
The shooting happened around 1:30 a.m., Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said, when two Secret Service agents and a sheriff’s deputy discovered a man in his early 20s was just inside Mar-a-Lago’s front gate carrying a gas can and a shotgun.
“The only words we said to him were, ‘Drop the items,’ which means the gas can and the shotgun,” Bradshaw said during a Sunday morning news conference. “He put the gas can down and pointed the shotgun at the officers.”
The agents and deputy fired, Bradshaw said. The suspect was dead at the scene.
Bradshaw said he didn’t know how many shots were fired or whether the shotgun was loaded. He did say the deputy was wearing a bodycam.
No motive was given for Sunday’s suspect, who joins a growing list of Mar-a-Lago intruders since Trump first took office in January 2017. Businesswoman Yujing Zhang got deported to her native China after a trespass conviction and eight months in federal prison. Anthony Reyes came over a Mar-a-Lago outer wall in June, police said, for the purpose of proposing to Kai Trump, granddaughter of the president and daughter of Donald Trump Jr.
READ MORE: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago has seen security issues through the years. Here’s a rundown
Earlier this month, Ryan Wesley Routh was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of an assassination attempt in September 2024 at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
The FBI is leading the investigation into all aspects of the shooting — the suspect’s background, the trespass and the shooting — with Secret Service and PBSO backup. The Secret Service agents will be put on administrative leave during the investigation, as is standard.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Brett Skiles asked any neighbors with surveillance video showing anything that “looks suspicious or out of place” to contact the FBI at 800-225-5324 or PBSO.
This story was originally published February 22, 2026 at 8:30 AM.
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David J. Neal,Jay Weaver
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