Gunman had a history of anti-Republican activity,
The gunman BELLEVILLE, ILL. — who shot a top GOP congressman and several other people Wednesday at a baseball practice outside the nation’s capital had a long history of lashing out at Republicans and recently alarmed a neighbor by firing a rifle into a field behind his Illinois house.
James T. Hodgkinson, 66, wounded House Rep. Steve Scalise before being fatally shot by police who were guarding the House majority whip.
In the hours after the attack in Alexandria, Va., a picture began to emerge of the shooter, who had a mostly minor arrest record and worked as a home inspector. What stood out was his disdain for Republicans.
On Facebook, Hodgkinson was a member of a group called “Terminate the Republican Party,” a fact that seemed to take on chilling new meaning in light of an account from South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan. He said he was preparing to leave the baseball field when a man politely asked him whether it was a Democratic or Republican team before quietly walking off.
Until recently, Hodgkinson ran a home-inspection business out of his house in southern Illinois. His Facebook page shows that he was a fan of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who last year made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Hodgkinson frequently wrote letters to his local newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat, which published nearly two dozen of them between 2010 and 2012. Many included complaints about the same theme: income inequality.
Hodgkinson, who spent most of his life in the community of 42,000 just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, compared the economic conditions in the wake of the recession to those that preceded the Great Depression. He excoriated Congress for not increasing the number of tax brackets and adopting other tax-reform measures.
On March 24, a neighbor, Bill Schaumleffel, recalled hearing shots being fired outside his house, which stands about 500 feet behind Hodgkinson’s home. When he went outside, he saw Hodgkinson firing a rifle into a cornfield. He was squeezing off five or six rounds at a time and, according to the report of the incident, fired about 50 shots in all.
“I yelled, ‘Quit shooting toward the houses,’” Schaumleffel said.
When Hodgkinson refused to stop, Schaumleffel called the sheriff ’s department.
St. Clair County Sheriff Rick Watson said Wednesday that Hodgkinson showed the deputy all required firearms licenses and documentation for the high-powered hunting rifle, which he said he was simply using for target practice. No charges were filed.
“He said, ‘I understand,’ and said he needed to take the gun to a range to shoot it,” Watson said. “There was nothing we could arrest him for, and there was no indication he was mentally ill or going to harm anyone.
“The only thing I was concerned about was that it was such a high-powered gun, and that somebody could possibly get hurt.”
Watson said the deputy on Wednesday recalled Hodgkinson being “very cordial.”
Over the last several weeks, Hodgkinson spent time at a YMCA near the site of the shooting, sitting with a computer in the lobby or at a table in an exercise area that overlooked the baseball field.