Former Alexandria Mayor Talked To Baseball Shooter Daily At YMCA

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By Henry Rodgers

Former Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille talked with shooter James T. Hodgkinson every morning for the past month and a half, and even tried to get him a job at one point.

Euille’s daily routine is to work out at the YMCA every morning, go to the lobby to drink coffee and read on his phone. Hodgkinson was often on his laptop in the lobby of the gym, where he recognized Euille as the former mayor and struck up conversation. Euille, a former Democrat, told The Washington Post that Hodgkinson agreed with him politically.

“He was a very friendly person, but what I did notice about this gentleman is he’d open up his gym bag and in it, he had everything he owned,” Euille said. “He was living out of the gym bag. That, and he sat in the Y’s lobby for hours and hours. Outside of myself, I don’t think he knew anyone else in town.”

Hodgkinson also frequented Pork Barrel, an Alexandria restaurant near the baseball field where the shooting took place. Jamie Craig, the bar manager, told WaPo that “all the bartenders here have served him, each and every one of us described him as kind of creepy and not a friendly person.”

Craig said that Hodgkinson would come in and watch golf on TV. “He just seemed like the average working-class kind of guy,” she said. “He didn’t look disheveled.”

Hodgkinson died at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning at George Washington University Hospital, after receiving gunshot wounds from Capitol Police officers.

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