Alleged Trump gunman Ryan Wesley Routh busted with bomb during 2002 police standoff

GREENSBORO, North Carolina — The alleged gunman who authorities say tried to kill former President Donald Trump was arrested with a bomb — a “weapon of mass destruction” — following a tense police standoff in 2002, according to authorities.It’s just one incident in a long history of dangerous and unsettling behavior recounted by cops and neighbors in his hometown.

Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction after Greensboro, North Carolina, police arrested him during a traffic stop that escalated dramatically when he barricaded himself in the office of his roofing business.Tracy Fulk, the now-retired Greensboro cop who arrested Routh back then, told The Post the man was on cops’ radar when she spotted him driving with a revoked license and pulled him over.

“When I got just about to the driver’s door, I saw him reach into the center of the car — so of course I shined my flashlight and looked and he opened a duffel back and there was a gun in it,” Fulk recalled.“He never picked it up.

He just kind of held his hand over the duffel bag, so I backed up and I issued commands, and he just decided to put it in drive and he drove,” she added.Routh, who drove to his offices and barricaded himself from police, was also in possession of a binary explosive fitted with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap — the components of an explosive device, according to Greensboro police.

Fulk said she was wary of the man, so she called for backup while taking cover behind her vehicle.“I think we were out there a couple hours, but it seemed like forever,” the former officer said.

“I could see him inside pacing back and forth and every once in a while he would look out the window.“But he never pointed a gun at anybody that night,” she added.

“Once they got him to surrender, that was it.” Fulk said she was shocked to learn that the man she encountered all those years ago was the same man accused of ...