Police identify 66-year old James Hodgkinson as suspect who shot a United States senator today

The man who allegedly opened fire at a congressional baseball practice in Virginia has been identified as James T. Hodgkinson.

In a news conference, President Donald Trump confirms that the assailant in the shooting is now dead.

Hodgkinson was a 66-year-old man from Belleville, Illinois, which is in the southern part of the state near St. Louis. He was a small business owner in Illinois who defined himself publicly by his firm support of Bernie Sanders and his hatred of President Donald Trump.

Late Hodgkinson was married and lived in Belleville, Illinois. He started his own company, JTH Inspections, in 1994 and conducted home inspections and mold/air quality testing. But he quit that job on New Year's Eve last year, according to his Facebook profile.

Hodgkinson has written more than a dozen letters to the Belleville News-Democrat, a local paper, from 2010 to 2012. One of the final letters from Hodgkinson, in July of 2012, called for President Obama's re-election and to "vote all Republicans out of Congress."