Armed man is fatally shot at Mar-a-Lago, Secret Service says

Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club and residence, in Palm Beach, Fla., on June 26, 2020. A man was shot and killed by law enforcement, including agents from the United States Secret Service, after he entered the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago early Sunday morning, Feb. 22, 2026, according to a statement posted by the agency on X. (Saul Martinez/The New York Times)

By MINHO KIM, ALI WATKINS and TYLER PAGER

An armed man was shot and killed by law enforcement, including agents from the Secret Service, after he entered the secure perimeter of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, early Sunday, local and federal authorities announced.

Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said that the man was Austin Tucker Martin, 21, of Cameron, North Carolina. He said officials confirmed Martin’s identity through his driver’s license. Martin was confronted inside the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago complex, and was carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel canister, the Secret Service said in a statement.

Trump hosted state governors at the White House on Saturday night and was not at Mar-a-Lago at the time of the shooting. He has not yet commented on the shooting and has no public appearances scheduled for Sunday. He posted a few messages on social media Sunday, congratulating the U.S. men’s hockey team for winning the gold medal at the Olympics.

Bradshaw said during a news conference Sunday that the man was told by law enforcement to “drop the items.” The man put down the canister but raised the shotgun to a “shooting position,” prompting the dispatched officers to open fire and kill him, Bradshaw said.

Bradshaw showed a photo of a shotgun and a canister to the reporters. Agents at the scene were wearing body cameras, he said.

At least two Secret Service agents and a Palm Beach County officer were involved in the shooting, Bradshaw said. Investigators with the FBI, the Secret Service and the sheriff’s office were investigating, the Secret Service said.

At the news conference, Brett Skiles, the FBI special agent in charge of the Miami office, asked people living near the scene of the shooting to check their security cameras for any suspicious activity overnight and to report any relevant footage.

As of Sunday morning, Palm Beach’s busy winter season largely continued despite a heightened police presence. Joggers and dog walkers peppered the streets, and hotel goers at the trademark pink Colony Hotel were bustling in and out, holding iced drinks. But access to South Ocean Boulevard, a major vein leading to Mar-a-Lago, was partially blocked to cars as of 10:30 a.m.

The incident Sunday was not the first involving an armed suspect at one of Trump’s properties in Florida. In September 2024, Secret Service agents opened fire on Ryan Routh, who was standing with a rifle near a chain-link fence on the perimeter of one of Trump’s golf courses while the president was playing a round. Routh was convicted of trying to assassinate Trump and was sentenced to life in prison this month.

That assassination attempt followed an attack on Trump a few weeks earlier. In July 2024, a lone gunman climbed onto a roof hundreds of feet from the podium where Trump was giving a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, and shot eight bullets in his direction, killing a rally participant and injuring two others. One of the bullets — or its fragments — struck Trump on his right ear. The gunman, Thomas Crooks, was shot and killed at the scene.

The Secret Service faced intense scrutiny and rebuke after investigations showed that the agency had received reports about Crooks as suspicious about an hour before the shooting. The agency was also criticized for excluding the roof of a warehouse where Crooks shot at Trump from its security zone.