Scalise shooter reportedly had list

WASHINGTON — The man who shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others at a congressional baseball practice earlier this week had with him a piece of paper with doodles and the names of three lawmakers, according to a person familiar with the case.

The person told The Associated Press on Saturday that investigators aren’t sure of the significance of the names and don’t know if it was a list of people he was targeting. This person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The person did not disclose the names but said those listed had been briefed.

The New York Times reported that the lawmakers were Republicans and that the shooter had pictures of the ballpark on his cellphone, citing law enforcement officials.

Scalise’s trauma surgeon said Friday that he can hope to make an “excellent recovery,” even though the lawmaker arrived at the hospital Wednesday at imminent risk of death and remained in intensive care.

Several other people were also injured in Wednesday’s shooting before Scalise’s security detail and other police officers gunned down the assailant, who later died. The shooter was an Illinois man, James Hodgkinson, who had lashed out against President Donald Trump and Republicans through social media.

Also suffering relatively minor injuries were two Capitol Police officers, David Bailey and Crystal Griner, and House GOP aide Zack Barth. Griner remained hospitalized at MedStar Hospital after getting shot in the ankle, and the doctor, Dr. Jack Sava, described her in good condition.

Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mika, who was shot multiple times and critically wounded, has undergone surgery and doctors expect a full recovery, his family said Saturday.

In Belleville, Ill., Hodgkinson, 66, was known to some friends and neighbors as a volatile figure.

“Is it shocking?” asked Doug Knepper, whose son is married to one of Hodgkinson’s foster daughters. “No, because the man did not seem 100 percent stable to me.”

One of Hodgkinson’s foster daughters killed herself in a gruesome fashion: by dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself on fire. Another described herself as “more of a hindrance than a daughter.” And when Hodgkinson dragged his grandniece by her hair and tried to choke her, police were called in, and he was charged with battery. In previously sealed court papers obtained by an area newspaper, she described him as an abusive alcoholic who hit her repeatedly.

He pleaded innocent and the case was eventually dismissed, records show, because the victims did not appear in court.

For all his complaining about Republicans, he had little to do with Democratic politics in his hometown.

“Never heard his name, ever, ever, ever,” said Patty Sprague, the St. Clair County auditor, who has been in elective office for more than a decade. “We knew our volunteers, and he was not a part of it at all.”

A onetime high school wrestler who worked for years in construction and then ran his own home inspection business, Hodgkinson spent much of his adult life in Belleville, a Southern Illinois community of just over 40,000 people not far from St. Louis. He lived with his wife of nearly 30 years, Suzanne.

Cindi Clements, 59, who has known the Hodgkinsons for more than 20 years, said James Hodgkinson had long been “Billy Goat Gruff” and was known for his “abruptness.” She said Hodgkinson’s political views had taken an “extreme, fanatic” turn in 2016; while “life moved on for other people,” she said, the election had “never ended for him.”

After one of the couple’s foster daughters, Wanda Ashley Stock, set herself on fire in 1996, the couple told the local newspaper, The Belleville News-Democrat, that they did not know what had prompted a “very practical, levelheaded girl” to take her own life. The newspaper went on to say that the couple later discovered that the young woman had previously attempted suicide, and that hours before she killed herself, her boyfriend had broken up with her.

Experts caution that many children arrive in foster homes with deep-rooted problems that cannot be attributed to those who care for them.