A British man was detained after attempting to seize a gun from an officer at a Las Vegas rally in order to kill Donald Trump on Saturday.
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Police arrested the 19-year-old after he attempted to pull a police officer’s gun from its holster inside a Las Vegas theater where Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, was holding a campaign rally.
In a complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada, Michael Steven Sandford was charged with an act of violence on restricted grounds.
Police said Michael Sandford, a Briton, struck up a conversation with a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer under the pretense that he was seeking to get an autograph.
He told officials he had been planning to kill Mr Trump for around a year, but finally felt confident about trying it, the complaint states. The complaint also stated that Sandford went to the Battelfield Vegas gun range the day before the Trump event to learn how to shoot a gun.
Court research showed he was unemployed, living out of his auto and in the USA illegally, the Associated Press news agency reports. His mother, Lynne Sandford, told court researchers that her son was treated for obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia when he was younger, and that he once ran away from a hospital, according to the public defender. Federal Magistrate Judge George Foley deemed Sandford a potential danger to the community and a flight risk.
Sandford’s father, Paul Davey, described his arrest as an “absolute shock”. He overstayed his visa and doesn’t have a permanent address or a job.
But he insisted that Sandford didn’t have any violent tendencies.
Donald Trump’s son praised local authorities and the Secret Service for stopping the attempted attack, though he didn’t say if there would be any security changes on the campaign trail.
Sandford came to America 18 months ago to live with a girl he’d met in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Sandford has not entered a plea, according to The Associated Press.
Secret Service agents said Sandford told them he planned to kill Trump.
Sandford had also bought a ticket to a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, for later on Saturday as a back-up, according to the secret service report. “It’s so against his nature, and obviously with his Asperger’s, we think somebody has got hold of him and done something”.
While Sandford told police he had been living out of his auto, Facebook photos of his bedroom back home in Britain show walls decked out in camouflage and fake foliage cover, with almost a dozen replica assault weapons hanging from the wall.
Britain’s Foreign Office is “providing assistance” in the case, a spokesman said.
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Mr Sandford attended Powell Corderoy Primary School in Dorking, then went on to Ascombe School, whose headteacher David Blow declined to comment.
