Man fatally shot near Mar-a-Lago after entering perimeter with weapons

An armed man in his early 20s was shot and killed by U.S. Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy on Sunday, Feb. 22, after breaching the perimeter at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to officials.

Two agents and a deputy spotted the man at about 1:30 a.m. near the north gate of the property, carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel can. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said they confronted the man, identified as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina, and ordered him to drop his weapons.

The sheriff said Martin lowered the gas can but “raised the shotgun to a shooting position,” at which point the agents and deputy began to shoot, killing him.

Bradshaw, speaking to reporters at a 9:30 a.m. news conference, said he didn’t know how many rounds the agents fired or whether Martin was known to law enforcement prior to this incident.

He did not identify the agents or deputy involved — all of whom are on administrative leave as the FBI investigates the shooting — and did not say who fired the fatal shot. He said the deputy was equipped with a body-worn camera but did not indicate if or when the footage will be released.

Neither Trump nor first lady Melania Trump were at Mar-a-Lago, as they were hosting the Governor’s Association Dinner at the White House. Authorities have not said who was present at Trump’s Palm Beach estate during the break-in, noting only that no Secret Service “protectees” were among them.

FBI special agent Brett Skiles, who spoke alongside Bradshaw, asked Palm Beach residents to check their security cameras for “anything that looks suspicious or out of place” during the night of Feb. 21 and the early morning hours of Feb. 22.

Mar-a-Lago gunman reported missing night of break-in

Martin’s name began to circulate online soon after the Secret Service announced the shooting. The FBI did not confirm the identity until hours later, by which point internet sleuths had already seized upon a missing-persons flyer for a man with the same name.

The family of the missing man shared the flyer on Facebook at 7 a.m. on Feb. 22, six hours after the shooting at Mar-a-Lago. The flyer contained his name and photo, along with a plea for information about his whereabouts. His mother, who did not respond to a request for comment, said her son was last heard from at 7:51 p.m. on Feb. 21.

The post collected messages of well-wishes and prayers in the morning but was soon inundated with comments about the Mar-a-Lago shooting. Strangers asked whether the blonde, smiling, bespectacled man from Carthage, North Carolina, was the same one rumored to have broken into Trump’s estate nearly 700 miles south.

Other strangers, apparent Trump supporters, did not need confirmation before commenting on the mother’s post, ridiculing her lost son and responding to messages of sympathy with the taunt: “F*** around, find out.”

A spokesperson for Moore County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina, where Martin lived, said the young man’s relative approached a deputy and reported him missing at 1:38 a.m. on Feb. 22, mere minutes after the shooting occured.

The deputy entered Martin into a national database of missing people. Federal authorities in Florida soon informed the sheriff’s office of an active investigation involving their missing Martin.

“The Moore County Sheriff’s Office had no prior history involving Martin before the missing person report,” the agency said.

Other threats, security breaches since Trump became president

The overnight break-in was not the first security breach at the president’s Palm Beach County properties.

In 2019, a University of Wisconsin student was intercepted in the tunnel connecting the club to the beach. The following year, an opera singer with a history of mental illness made it through security checkpoints, triggering a high-speed chase past Mar-a-Lago during which her car was shot at multiple times.

She survived; the car did not.

Around the same period, two Chinese women tried to enter the property, one of them carrying four cell phones and a USB drive infected with malware.

In September 2024, Ryan Routh hid in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club near West Palm Beach. Prosecutors said he aimed a rifle toward the course’s sixth hole while Trump teed off at the fifth, but was spotted by a Secret Service agent before Trump came into his line of sight.

More: Trump Mar-a-Lago intruder Yujing Zhang ordered back to China

The breaches continued into Trump’s second term. Shortly after his re-election in December 2024, a woman and a teenage boy were arrested in separate trespassing incidents at the club.

In February 2025, a man jumped over a wall and onto the lawn just one day before the president was scheduled to return. Nine months later, an 85-year-old resident of Palm Beach’s South End crashed through police barricades at a security checkpoint near the club while Trump was home; she was arrested on charges of DUI and hit-and-run and released on a $1,250 bond.

Just last week, competing demonstrations outside Trump International Golf Club ended with the arrest of Paul Messer, a 76-year-old Lake Worth Beach-area man, on a misdemeanor battery charge.

Messer had been carrying an anti-Trump flag as part of a “Not My President” protest against Trump’s immigration policies. Deputies said they saw him push a woman, a Trump supporter, multiple times in her chest and neck with the flagpole.

Trump was on the course at the time, playing golf with Gov. Ron DeSantis and former college football coaches Urban Meyer and Nick Saban.

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Man fatally shot near Mar-a-Lago after entering secure perimeter