
The man who shot up a congressional baseball practice on Wednesday was a regular at a sports bar in Alexandria where he 'creeped out' the female bartenders while he drank by himself watching golf, staffers at the restaurant told the DailyMail.com

James Hodgkinson, 66, died from gun injuries on Wednesday hours after he opened fire on a group of Republican congressmen and their aides who were practicing for a congressional baseball game in the Washington, D.C. suburb. Steve Scalise, the third-most senior House Republican, and four others were injured.

Scalise is critically-ill after surgery on the wound to his hip while the other three wounded - two of them the hero Capitol Hill Police officers who ended Hodgkinson's shooting spree. Congressional staffer Zachary Barth and lobbyist Matt Mika were both shot but are expected to recover.

Hodgkinson was a staunch Sanders supporter and campaigned for the left-wing senator to get the Democratic nomination for president last year. His family said he was distraught over Trump's November election win and revealed that he had been living in Alexandria out of a gym bag and sleeping in his car for the last two months.

A married union tradesman with a home inspection business, Hodgkinson had threatened to 'destroy' the president and his administration on social media but was not known to Secret Service.

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James T. Hodgkinson (pictured right campaigning against Republicans in 2012) was a hateful Trump opponent who threatened to 'destroy' the president on social media before attacking a GOP baseball practice on Wednesday

Creeped out: Female bar staff found Hodgkinson strange, workers at the Pork Barrel BBQ told DailyMail.com

Slept here: Hodgkinson slept in the back of his Ford E-series van, which had curtains down the side and blinds at the rear. FBI agents removed a sign suggesting the president was 'chicken in chief' on Wednesday afternoon

Prepared for a stay: FBI officers removed bedding from the van, which also had a fan inside it, and curtains to keep out the light from the front window

Wanted: FBI say they need information on the shooter in the weeks running up to the attack and revealed he was 5'6" tall. His lawyer called him an 'angry little man'

Regular here: The shooter showered at the YMCA and was 'living out of his gym bag' according to another daily user

Fake address: Hodgkinson set up a P.O. box at this UPS store but gave it a fake apartment number to suggest it was an actual home

Simpson Field: The baseball field where Hodgkinson opened fire is just beside the YMCA where he showered.

Scalise (left), congressional staffer Zachary Barth (center) and lobbyist Matt Mika (right) were all shot

There was heightened security in the capitol after the shooting on Wednesday morning

His criminal record included a 2006 arrest for punching his female neighbor in the face as she tried to shield his underage daughter from him.

Hodgkinson, who is from Illinois, had been living in Alexandria fortsome time - perhaps as much as a few months - before the shooting.

The 'Bernie bro' frequented Pork Barrel BBQ, a local bar near the baseball field, often stopping in during happy hour or to watch golf games, staff told DailyMail.com

'He definitely creeped out all our female bartenders,' said Jamie Craig, a bartender at the restaurant. 'I tried to shy away from him… just a feeling, he gave me a weird, odd vibe.'

LEFT-WING FANATIC'S VIOLENT PAST His criminal record included a 2006 arrest for punching his female neighbor in the face as she tried to shield his underage daughter from him. According to a police report, Hodgkinson went to the neighbor's home looking for his daughter and found her upstairs. He dragged her out by the hair but she ran into her neighbor's car. The female neighbor sat in the vehicle in the front seat. Hodgkinson got access to them, slashing the seatbelt his daughter was wearing as he and his wife pulled her out. He then hit the neighbor in the face, The Washington Post reported, but was never convicted. Advertisement

Craig said Hodgkinson would come to the bar alone, usually dressed in a collared shirt and jeans. He would order Budweiser, but usually only drank one or two.

Hodgkinson didn't talk about politics, said Craig, and he didn't mention his personal life.

They would usually discuss the weather or different types of craft beer, but Hodgkinson usually kept to himself and seemed to be staring out the windows daydreaming.

'He would always have one or two and leave. He did seem to be staring a lot out the windows,' said Craig.

'He was quiet, definitely not a socialite,' she added. 'He was not the friendliest of people. I remember he was a bit of a rude person sometimes.'

She said Hodgkinson would often look angry and annoyed when he tried to get the bartenders attention during busy times at the bar.

Craig said she is not sure when he started coming in, but it was probably a few months ago. She said she hadn't seen him in several weeks when she saw him on the news on Wednesday.

She said she was surprised by the news that he was the congressional shooter. Other bartenders at the restaurant started texting his photo, and all the staff seemed to remember him.

'[The other bartenders] were showing the picture around on the text message, we have a group text message and everybody remembered him,' said Craig. 'That's the guy who would come in and have a Bud.'

Trump-hating Hodgkinson had wanted to protest the president by moving to Washington D.C. - but found himself lonely, isolated and living out of his gym bag.

The Bernie Sanders supporter is known to have moved from his hometown of Belleville, Illinois, within recent weeks.

But instead of being able to make a permanent protest against the president he found himself essentially homeless and desperate to find work.

Acquaintance: Bill Euille, seen when he was mayor of Alexandria, told the Washington Post Hodgkinson had been around the YMCA for around six weeks

His last known sighting before the shooting was at the YMCA where he had been showering every day and spending time in the lobby, hunched over his laptop.

He was seen there about 7am Wednesday morning, minutes before he opened fire at the neighboring Simpson Field.

The exact date of his move from Illinois is still unclear. One account suggests his wife told friends in April that he was retiring.

The former mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, told the Washington Post that he had been aware of Hodgkinson for about six weeks, suggesting he moved at the end of April or beginning of May.

DailyMail.com has established that he opened a UPS P.O. box at a shop close to Simpson Field and the YMCA on May 31.

However he attached a bogus apartment number to the P.O. box so that anyone mailing to him would think it was to a real address.

Workers at the shop declined to say whether they had seen him recently.

The Bernie-lover did not appear to have anywhere to stay and appears to have been sleeping in his white Ford E-series van.

It was parked beside Simpson Field on Wednesday and FBI agents carried out a fingertip examination. Its windows were covered with curtains and blinds and they removed an anti-Trump sign.

Hodgkinson was upping the anti-Trump rhetoric while he spent time in Alexandria - although he also told his family 24 hours before the shooting that his protest was about to end and he would come back home.

His brother Michel Hodgkinson told the New York Times that the shooter had phoned his wife Suzanne on Tuesday to say he was planning to return to Illinois, because he missed her and his dogs.

Hodgkinson had a lengthy criminal record which includes charges, but no convictions, for DUI, domestic battery, pointing a gun at a relative. He is seen in mugshots in 1992 (left) and 2006 (right)

Hodgkinson documented his violent hatred for the president across his various social media pages

Hodgkinson shared numerous Facebook posts against the president, making no secret of his angry Republican hatred

'Coming home': The shooter told his wife Suzanne he was returning to their home in Belleville, IL, because he missed her and his dogs - but less than 24 hours later he was dead after his attempted atrocity

The former mayor of Alexandria, Bill Euille, had become an acquaintance when he saw Hodkingson each day at the YMCA, - which was behind a police cordon in the aftermath of the shooting.

It does not offer accommodation but is open from 5.30am to 10pm during the week, giving him somewhere warm and dry to spend time.

Euille told the Washington Post that he would see Hodgkinson showering after his own morning workout and began to speak to him regularly.

'After the first or second week, he asked about good places to eat . . . within walking distance,' Euille told the newspaper.

'A long weekend was coming up, and he asked what was going on in town. . . . That was the type of conversation we had.'

Euille said that 'very friendly' Hodgkinson was 'living out of the gym bag' and appeared to have everything he owned in it.

He added: 'Outside of myself, I don't think he knew anyone else in town.'

The two barely spoke about politics but Euille, a Democrat, said that when there was political news on television, Hodgkinson would say he agreed with Euille and his party.

But he did say that the shooter had asked what work was available, and said he had been a home inspector, suggesting he was either looking for a way to stay, or running out of cash.

Whatever the motivation, that plan changed radically Wednesday morning.

Euille said he had been told by the manager of the YMCA that Hodgkinson was last seen there at 7am Wednesday morning, shortly before the shooting.

Shortly after 7am on Wednesday, he opened fire from behind the third base dugout as the group of GOP figures practiced batting on the field in preparation for a charity baseball game against Democrats which is scheduled for Thursday night.

Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis and Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina spoke with him moments before the shooting.

They told how the shooter approached them and asked if they were Republican or Democrat. He walked away after being told they were members of the GOP, Duncan said.

The pair escaped his bloody rampage and only identified him as the shooter after seeing his photograph in the news.

Two Capitol Police officers who were accompanying Scalise were the only other armed people on the scene. They returned fire with their pistols but were shot themselves.

As bullets flew across the field, the congressmen fled to a dugout and huddled on top of one another, using their belts as makeshift tourniquets to treat the wounds of those who were shot.

Barth, a congressional staffer for Texas Rep. Roger Williams, was shot in the leg but is expected to recover. The two Capitol Police officers, Krystal Griner and David Bailey, are also expected to make a full recovery.

Mika was also injured and is in hospital while Scalise is in critical condition at MedStar Washington Center after undergoing emergency surgery on his hip.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was rushed to hospital after being shot in the hip. He was initially expected to recover but his condition worsened and became critical on Wednesday afternoon

President Trump said Scalise would make a full recovery. He paid tribute to him as a 'true friend and patriot'

THE TRUMP-HATING GUNMAN'S SOCIAL MEDIA RANTS James T. Hodgkinson raged against Donald Trump and the Republican establishment in a number of social media posts. The fervent Bernie Sanders support also shared many articles and images in support of the defeated Democratic presidential hopeful. The 66-year-old shooter's social media history has been highlighted in the wake of Wednesday's shooting. Advertisement

Sen. Rand Paul, who was also there but as not hurt, described the scene as a 'killing field'. Rep. Mark Walker said the gunman seemed intent on murdering 'as many Republicans as possible.'

US Capitol Police Officer David Bailey is being hailed as a hero for returning fire on the gunman with his pistol despite being injured himself

The attempt to massacre Republican was the culmination of the Rachel Maddow superfan's long indoctrination in the grievances of the left.

He wrote frequent letters to his local paper in Illinois in which he complained about income inequality and compared the state of the economy to the Great Depression long before President Trump ever launched his political career.

'I have never said “life sucks,” only the policies of the Republicans,' he wrote in one from 2012 where he described his plan to increase the number of tax brackets.

In 2011, he praised Occupy protesters in New York and Boston who he said 'are tired of our do-nothing Congress doing nothing while our country is going down the tubes.'

Hodgkinson's violent tendencies and involvement in Wednesday's attack came as a surprise to people who worked with him on Sanders' 2016 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

One told The Washington Post: 'I met him on the Bernie trail in Iowa, worked with him in the Quad Cities area.

'He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics. He was more on the really progressive side of things,' Charles Orear said, adding that Hodgkinson was 'quite mellow'.

A friend of the man spoke outside his home in Belleville, Illinois - 800 miles from where the shooting occurred - to say he was a 'nice guy'.

Despite his hateful social media posts and criminal history, sources told CNN the man was not on the Secret Service's radar.

Sanders, who expressed his prayers for the victims before learning that the gunman was one of his fans, condemned his supporter as he spoke at the Capitol on Wednesday. However aides stayed between him and reporters milling near the Senate chamber.

In a statement on the Senate floor, the Vermont socialist said that he was aware the shooter 'apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign' - and condemned his actions.

Sanders said he was 'sickened' by the shooting

'I am sickened by this despicable act,' he said. 'Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.'

'Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.'

The president spoke at a White House press conference at around 11am.

He made a plea for unity and thanked the police and emergency responders involved, making no mention of the gunman other than to confirm his death.

President Trump revealed he had spoken to Scalise's wife to offer her his support and described the injured Whip as a 'true friend' and 'patriot'.

Later in the day, Joe Barton, whose young children were with him at the field, announced that the game would go ahead despite the shooting.

Both he and Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle used the occasion as an example of the angry hatred between Republicans and Democrats which is becoming more commonplace.

'We need to take a step back. I think the internet, twitter and all the instantaneous of the news cycle has made it more impersonal and members flying back to their districts every weekend, very few people live up here. It is different climate today than it was In 1985. Part of it is technology and part of it is how politics has evolved,' Rep. Barton said.

Scalise was shot in the hip and taken to hospital by air ambulance shortly after the attack. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks tried to stop the bleeding from his wound as Sen. Paul, a trained doctor, cut his baseball uniform to examine the injury.

Scalise was on the field when he was shot but was able to drag himself to safety in the dugout, where the other men were hiding, as the two Capitol Police who had accompanied him for the practice exchanged gunfire.

Trump pleads for unity after GOP baseball shooting as Donald Jr. says attack proves why jokes about his father's assassination AREN'T funny At a press conference at The White House on Wednesday, President Trump thanked the police and first responders who attended the shooting The president pleaded for unity at a White House press conference to address an attack on his GOP colleagues on Wednesday. Speaking hours after leaders including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others were injured by gunman James Hodgkinson, Trump said: 'We are stronger when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.' Trump referred to the gunman once to confirm his death, describing him only as 'the assailant'. He devoted the rest of his speech to praising the Capitol Police and emergency responders who attended the attack. 'Melania and I are grateful for their heroism and praying for the swift recovery of all victims. Congressman Scalise is a friend and a very good friend, He is a patriot and a fighter and he will recover from this assault. 'Steve, I want you to know, you have the prayers not only of the entire city but of an entire nation and, frankly, the entire world. America is praying for you and America is praying for all of the victims of this shooting. I have spoken with Steve's wife Jennifer and I pledged to her our full and absolute support. Anything she needs, we are with her and the entire Scalise family. 'I have also spoken with Chief Matthew Verderosa (of the Capitol Police), he's doing a fantastic job, to express our sympathies for his wounded officers and to express my admiration for their officers. They perform a challenging job with incredible skill and their sacrifice makes democracy possible. 'We also commend the brave first responders from Alexandria Fire and Rescue who rushed to the scene. Everyone on that field is a public servant - our courageous police, our aides, and our dedicated members of congress who represent our people. 'We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans and that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace,' he said. Donald Jr. had an angrier public response. He re-tweeted a post which read: 'Events like today are EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our President.' He was referring to New York's Public Theatre and its current production of Julius Caesar in which the doomed emperor is portrayed as his father. The play has sparked outrage and accusations that its directors are glorifying violence against the president. It comes after the comedian Kathy Griffin's shocking participation in a photo-shoot in which she appeared to be holding a fake representation of the president's severed head. She apologized for the stunt after receiving angry backlash. Advertisement

Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle (L) and Rep. Rep. Joe Barton (R) vowed to carry on with Thursday's scheduled game despite the shooting. Barton choked back tears as he told how he sheltered with his young sons as the shooter sprayed the field with bullets

Texas Rep. Roger Williams (above) was not shot but was injured in the chaos as he tried to flee. One of his staffers suffered a gunshot wound to the leg

Williams is seen being taken to hospital after the shooting which took place as the men practiced batting at 7am

Rep. Williams gave a tearful speech at the US Capitol later in the day. Hobbling in on crutches after spraining his ankle as he dove into the dugout, he paid tribute to the police officers who were there,saying: 'They saved all of us out there, there is no question of it'