Secret Service officers arrested an armed Venezuelan man within blocks of the White House late Thursday after he allegedly told them voices in his head had sent him to Washington to kill President Donald Trump, the Department of Homeland Security said.
The suspect, Ronny Yordrix Guanipa Chrinos, 26, was in a truck that had been reported stolen. Inside, officers found an AR-15-style rifle, a MAC-10 handgun, a Glock 43X pistol and dozens of rounds of ammunition, according to DHS.
DHS said officers approached him on Constitution Avenue because he was acting suspiciously. A sworn affidavit from a Secret Service police officer gives a quieter picture: Chrinos was asleep in a parked blue Ford F-150 when an officer woke him at 11:42 p.m., and the stop began as a welfare check.
Speaking through Google Translate, Chrinos told the officer he had weapons he wanted to give to the government, the affidavit says. He also allegedly claimed he had wrested a gun away from people who had tried to kill him with it.
Investigators were told the truck was on loan from his employer, according to the affidavit. Chrinos also said he had purchased the weapons roughly a month earlier and had been sleeping in the vehicle.
He faces three counts apiece of unlawfully transporting a firearm, having unregistered guns and having unregistered ammunition. Other charges cover toting a rifle away from a residence or business, an unlicensed pistol, prohibited dangerous weapons, using a vehicle without permission, theft and receiving stolen goods.
Chrinos is being held by the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a detainer on him. Prosecutors are reviewing the evidence, and he is expected in federal court Monday. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer.
DHS said he crossed into the country illegally through Texas in March 2024, was picked up by Border Patrol and was later released. The department offered no further details about his immigration case.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran cast the arrest as proof that officers' training lets them defuse volatile encounters. He said armed people keep showing up at the White House complex and that the agency would step up efforts to identify those who threaten its protectees before they ever reach Washington.
While our personnel are trained to respond to situations like this and we remain confident in our tactics, we are alarmed by the increase in threat cases that continue to arise
Sean Curran, Secret Service director
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin credited the officers with stopping the man before anyone was hurt.
Trump has faced multiple attempts on his life, including the July 2024 rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, that killed one attendee and wounded him and two others. In April, a gunman breached security at the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton, wounding a Secret Service officer.
