What we know about suspected gunman in the Congressional Baseball shooting

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Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Details about Virginia gunman revealed
ABC News reports details about suspected Virginia gunman James T. Hodgkinson.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (WTVD) -- Information is starting to come in about the suspect in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia Wednesday.



ABC News reports multiple law enforcement sources have identified the suspected shooter as 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois.



Law enforcement is looking at anti-President Trump postings on his social media feeds to see if there's any connection.





MORE: 5 injured, including a Congressman, in shooting at Congressional baseball practice



Hodgkinson was a vocal opponent of President Trump and the Republican party on Facebook however there were no posts indicating violence or threats.



Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. Bernie Sanders said Hodgkinson volunteered on his campaign adding that he condemned the shooting in the "strongest terms."



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



Meanwhile, ABC News spoke with Hodgkinson's wife, who was at work and as of 10:30 a.m.. She was unaware of the alleged link to her husband.



Sources identified to ABC News the suspect in the Congressional baseball shooting as James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Il.
ABC News/Facebook


She said he has been living in Alexandria, Virginia, for the past two months. She said he had not been working while in Virginia, and was expected to return to Illinois in the coming days.


At the end of last year, this same James T. Hodgkinson left his job as a "Home Inspector, Mold/Air Quality Tester," according to the Facebook page.



Court records show that Hodgkinson's legal trouble started in the 1990s with arrests for resisting police and drunken driving. His most serious problems apparently came in 2006, when he was arrested on a battery charge. Records indicate he has not been involved in any legal cases since 2011.



He also wrote frequent letters to his hometown newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat, which published nearly two dozen letters between 2010 and 2012, many of which included complaints about the same theme: income inequality.



Hodgkinson compared the economic conditions of the time to those that preceded the Great Depression and excoriated Congress for not increasing the number of tax brackets and taking other tax reform measures.



On May 14, 2010, he wrote: "I don't envy the rich; I despise the way they have bought our politicians and twisted our laws to their benefit."



On March 4, 2011, he wrote that Congress should rewrite tax codes to ease the tax burdens of the middle class.



"Let's get back to the good ol' days, when our representatives had a backbone and a conscience," he wrote.



In October 2011, he applauded the Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York and Boston, writing that the demonstrators "are tired of our do-nothing Congress doing nothing while our country is going down the tubes."



He also wrote about conservative talk radio and TV, saying that his favorite show was Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program and writing that he believed MSNBC provided "a better, balanced opinion," than Fox News.



This is a developing story. Keep checking ABC11.com for the latest on this developing story.



ABC News and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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