This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

James “Tom” Hodgkinson, the gunman who shot congressman Steve Scalise during an attack on a Republican congressional baseball practice session on Wednesday, was a leftwing political activist with a record of domestic violence.

Hodgkinson, 66, died from injuries sustained during a shootout with police. He was previously based in Belleville, Illinois, but had been living in Alexandria, Virginia, the site of Wednesday’s shooting, for the past two months.

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The US Capitol police confirmed in a statement on Wednesday afternoon that Hodgkinson was the gunman, and that he had died in an exchange of fire with agents from their dignitary protection division.

The FBI said that it was investigating Hodgkinson’s “associates, whereabouts, social media impressions, and potential motivations.”

Dillon McConnell, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in an email that investigators were at Hodgkinson’s home in Illinois. “We are there assisting the FBI, Belleville police and our other law enforcement partners in the execution of a search warrant,” said McConnell.

In April 2006, Hodgkinson was arrested for battery, domestic battery and discharging a firearm, after he allegedly physically assaulted his foster daughter and two of her friends.

A St Clair County sheriff’s department incident report said Hodgkinson threw his daughter around a room, pulled her hair and hit her. He then punched a female friend of his daughter in the face “with a closed fist” and struck the woman’s boyfriend in the head with the stock of his shotgun, before firing a round as the man ran away.

One day earlier, according to a separate police report, Hodgkinson had badly damaged a wooden bedroom door in a neighbour’s home while searching for his daughter. All the charges were later dismissed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In this undated file photo, James Hodgkinson holds a sign during a protest outside of a United States post office in Belleville, Illinois. Photograph: Derik Holtmann/AP

Almost a decade earlier, another foster daughter living with Hodgkinson and his wife, Suzanne, had killed herself at the age of 17, according to the Belleville News-Democrat. The daughter, Wanda Ashley Stock, doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire inside a car.

Hodgkinson struck some people who met him as an unusual character who was difficult to read. “To be truthful, he was very strange,” Douglas Knepper, a relative of Hodgkinson, told the Guardian.

In March this year, police received a complaint from someone living near Hodgkinson that he was “in the pine trees, shooting”, according to another sheriff’s department report. The caller reported hearing about 50 shots. Police noted that Hodgkinson, who was found to have a valid state Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, was told to not shoot his gun in the area.

Hodgkinson had dissolved his home inspection business in January this year, according to Illinois state records, and had been posting statements railing against Donald Trump and other Republicans to his Facebook page over recent months.

In one post on 22 March, Hodgkinson wrote: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” In another, dated 25 December 2016, he wrote: “We Don’t Need or Deserve a Billionaire for President.”

Hodgkinson also posted messages criticising the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he described as “Republican Lite”. He showed strong support for Clinton’s rival in the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders. “I want Bernie to win the White House,” Hodgkinson posted in August 2016.

Sanders said in a statement on Wednesday that he had been told Hodgkinson had “apparently volunteered” on his presidential campaign. Media reports suggested Hodgkinson volunteered in Iowa.

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“I am sickened by this despicable act,” Sanders said in a statement. “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.”

Aaron Meurer, a neighbour, said Hodgkinson was vocal about his political stance and put a Sanders sign up on his lawn during last year’s Democratic primary campaign.

“He had strong political views, but nothing that seemed crazy,” said Meurer, who owns a landscaping business. “He was a liberal Democrat and I am kind of the opposite, but we never had a serious political dispute. I tended to avoid talking about it.”

Meurer said he often saw Hodgkinson working in his yard or playing with young children, who Meurer understood to be the children of Hodgkinson’s own adopted or fostered children.

Hodgkinson’s wife, Suzanne, said recently that he had “gone on a trip” but did not provide specific details, according to Meurer. “I just assumed he had retired and decided to go travelling,” the neighbour added.

According to his local newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat, Hodgkinson had long been involved in local activism and was a frequent author of letters to the paper, voicing opposition to Republican tax policy and advocating for the legalisation of marijuana.

“President Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickle down’ policy did not work, and never will,” he wrote in a letter in May 2012. That same year, he was photographed protesting outside a post office in Belleville holding a sign that said: “Tax the rich”.

Police reports from a decade ago indicate that Hodgkinson was sometimes irritated by neighbours and other residents around his home in Belleville. In January 2007, he called authorities to report that his neighbours’ trash collector had been turning around in his driveway. The following month he reported that a passing driver, whom he identified, had damaged his yard and decking.

James Hodgkinson’s 1968 high school yearbook photo. Photograph: Belleville Township West High School

Almost two years earlier, he had called the sheriff’s department to request more police presence near his property “due to juveniles drinking alcohol on the property behind his.” Hodgkinson told the deputy who arrived at his house that the under-age drinkers had been driving through his yard.

Hodgkinson was born in December 1950 in East St Louis, Illinois. He graduated from Belleville Township West high school in 1968. Unlike most of his classmates, he listed no interests, sports teams or associations in his yearbook entry. On his Facebook page, he said that he had attended Southwestern Illinois College and Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.

He had a brother and a sister. His brother, Mike, sang in their high school’s concert choir and was on the wrestling team. Their mother, Deloris, was a lab technician who died aged 81 in 2004. Their father, James, died at 91 in 2011.

A 2006 police report recorded him as being 5ft 6in and weighing 190lb. Witnesses at the baseball field on Wednesday reported the gunman was dressed in blue jeans and blue shirt as he calmly opened fire with a rifle on the practice session from behind a fence. Federal officials said he was armed with a handgun and a rifle.

“He was calm. He was just shooting back and they [law enforcement] were shooting at him,” one witness, Falisha Peoples, told MSNBC.

Dozens of reporters lined up outside Hodgkinson’s modest two-storey house on Wednesday evening as storm clouds began to roll in over the surrounding cornfields. The lights were on inside the property and a deputy from the St Clair county sheriff’s office said agents from the FBI and ATF remained inside.

A neighbour who did not want to be named said Hodgkinson’s wife had left the property earlier in the morning under escort. The main road outside had been blocked off by local police.

The neighbour, who had known Hodgkinson for three years and lived in the property next door, said the 66 year-old “kept himself to himself” but was known for expressing his political views and had attended local government meetings in the past.

“You think you know your neighbours,” he said. “But then you realize you don’t.”