Before Ryan Wesley Routh allegedly became the second man to try and kill Donald Trump in as many months, he was something else entirely: A fiend on the pickleball court.

“He was a reasonably good player. He played really hard,” Bryant Schultz told The Daily Beast in a phone interview. “He was the only one out at the courts who would dive for the ball. Most pickleball players do not dive to make a shot.”

Schultz, 62, of Kaneohe, Oahu, played frequently with Routh, 58, over a period of several years as part of a loose coalition of residents who showed up at Swanzy Beach Park three mornings a week to get their pickleball on.

Both on and off the court, Routh was “always personable and good-natured,” Schultz said, as well as chatty, on friendly terms with many of the park’s regulars. Hard on himself when he made mistakes, he never chastised his partners. “Except for his own errors, he was the most mild-mannered player out there.”

Routh first appeared at the park after the worst of the pandemic had passed, Schultz recalled. “He never appeared to have a bunch of money,” he said. “He was often borrowing paddles. For quite a while, he played with a really chewed-up wooden paddle—because of his dive, you know.”

During a federal court appearance on Monday, Routh was charged with two firearm possession counts. He told the court that he had “zero funds” in savings and had no assets beyond two trucks in Hawaii, according to CNN.

It wasn’t totally clear to his teammates what Routh did for a living. Schultz heard that he “worked on building tiny houses” and would do odd-job repairs around the community, including on a local pier. “He wasn’t paid or contracted,” as far as Schultz knew, he said. “He just went out and made the surface safe for people to walk on.”

On his LinkedIn page, which remained live on Monday, Routh advertised his work with a company called Camp Box Honolulu, which he wrote builds storage units and “very simple housing structures for the less fortunate.” In 2019, a year after Routh moved to Oahu, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that he’d pledged to build tiny homes for Kalaeloa’s homeless community.

One thing Routh didn’t appear to be—at least on the pickleball court—was political.

“I can’t recall him ever talking politics,” Schultz said. He’d had no idea Routh had self-published a 291-page book last year in which he called for Trump’s assassination, criticizing the former president for his 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. (Authorities have not yet laid out a possible motive in Sunday’s assassination attempt.)

In a section apparently directed at Iran’s government, Routh wrote, “You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.”

Routh has a scattered political history tracing back to his time in his native North Carolina, where he registered as an “unaffiliated” voter in 2012. In his book, he groused that he was “so tired of people asking me if I am a Democrat or Republican as I refuse to be put in a category and I must always answer independent.”

On social media, he had professed support for Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, President Joe Biden, and Trump, whom he disavowed in mid-2020.

“I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving…” he tweeted that June. “I will be glad when you gone.”

Schultz and his fellow picklers were aware, however, that Routh left Hawaii for Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, intent on fighting for Kyiv.

With no military experience and a lengthy criminal record, however, Routh was rebuffed by the Ukrainian defense ministry, he told Newsweek Romania in an article recently unearthed by CBS News.

“My initial goal was to come fight… but I’m 56, so initially they were like, I have no military experience, so they were like, you’re not an ideal candidate,” he told the magazine. “So they said, not right this minute. So plan B was to come here to Kyiv and promote getting more people here.”

Routh spent some time in the city trying to act as an informal recruiter for Ukraine’s International Legion, and spoke to both The New York Times and Semafor last year about his efforts. But several foreign soldiers involved with the legion told Slate on Sunday night that Routh “was not associated with them, recruited nobody to the cause, and did little during his time in Ukraine aside from garner publicity for himself.”

In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for the legion said, “We would like to clarify that Ryan Wesley Routh has never been part of, associated with, or linked to the International Legion in any capacity. Any claims or suggestions indicating otherwise are entirely inaccurate.”

After failing in his recruitment efforts, Routh eventually made his way back to Hawaii, where he took up pickleball again. The last time Schultz saw him was around four or five weeks before the assassination attempt, he said. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; it was just another day on the court.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, has been identified as the suspect who was arrested after allegedly pointing an AK-47 assault rifle at former President Trump while he golfed, according to law enforcement sources.

Routh frequently touted his do-gooder credentials and championed left-wing causes on social media.

His LinkedIn shows that he attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, but relocated to Hawaii sometime around 2018.

Routh describes on LinkedIn as “mechanically minded” and enjoying “ideas and invention and creative projects with artistic flair.”

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Routh was spotted by Secret Service agents near the Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach with an AK-47, according to sources.

The agents opened fire on him, but he fled. Routh was later arrested on I-95 by local police.

Routh is the owner of Camp Box Honolulu, a shed building company with few positive reviews. While Routh hadn’t posted on his X account in a year, he frequently criticized politicians including Trump, current President Joe Biden, and celebrities like Bruno Mars.

Many of his replies are nonsensical, including one directed towards X’s owner Elon Musk, in which he seemed to entertain purchasing a rocket from the billionaire. “I would like to buy a rocket from you. I wish to load it with a warhead for Putin’s Black Sea mansion bunker to end him. Can you give me a price please. It can be old and used as not returning,” Routh wrote.

Routh was a supporter of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, according to one of his posts in which he encouraged the Republican presidential candidates to continue their races. “You cannot quit. Why. You must stay on the ballot to the end. You must fight. You must continue giving speeches and push all the way to election day no matter the election results. Do not give in. Join Nikki and keep working. Never give up,” he wrote.

Routh is also a staunch supporter of Ukraine and Taiwan in their respective conflicts against Russia and China. He claims on X that he tried to “sell” the idea of having former Afghanistan troopers fight for Ukraine in Russia, but was denied multiple times before giving up after six months.

He also visited Kyiv and claimed that he would be willing to fight on the front lines, if he were permitted to.

This is a breaking story. Please check back for updates.