Scalise’s shooter wanted to ‘Terminate’ the GOP

Belleville, June 15: The gunman who shot a top GOP congressman and several other people at a baseball practice outside the nation’s capital had a long history of lashing out at Republicans and recently frightened a neighbour by firing a rifle into a field behind his Illinois home.

James T Hodgkinson, 66, wounded House Rep. Steve Scalise before he was fatally shot by the police, who had been guarding the House majority whip. In the hours after the attack in Alexandria, Virginia, a picture began to emerge of a shooter with a mostly minor arrest record who worked as a home inspector and despised the Republican Party.

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 that 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, Hodgk inson 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. Mr Sanders acknowledged that Hodgkinson had apparently been among many volunteers on his 2016 campaign.