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 whose family had reported him missing from the Carthage, North Carolina, area.

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.

Encounter at Mar-A-Lago entrance

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.

The FBI is leading the investigation into all aspects of the shooting — Martin’s background, the trespass and the shooting — with help from the Secret Service and the sheriff’s office. 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.

Austin Taylor Martin

Two hours before the Secret Service posted about the shooting at Mar-a-Lago, Sunday morning Facebook posts by Martin’s mother and other relatives asked for help finding him. The posts said he hadn’t been heard from since just before 8 p.m. Saturday night.

The Moore County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina, which had no prior history with Martin, said around 1:38 a.m., “a relative of Austin Tucker Martin approached a deputy at a local business and reported him missing.”

After he was entered into a national missing person’s database, the sheriff’s office said, “federal authorities informed the sheriff’s office that they are conducting an active investigation in Florida involving Martin.”

Getting into Mar-a-Lago

No motive was given for the actions of Martin, 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.

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.

_____

©2026 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.