The wife of James Hodgkinson, the left-wing terrorist who opened fire at a Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday morning, spoke to reporters outside of her home for the first time on Thursday.
Suzanne Hodgkinson said that her husband had moved to the Washington, D.C., area in March to “work with people to change the tax brackets.” She said that her daughter and two-year-old grandchild had recently moved back into the house with them, and she thought her husband had perhaps left to get away from that. She refused to provide further details.
The visibly shaken woman told reporters she hadn’t seen her husband since he left.
“I can’t believe he did this. I cannot believe it,” she said. The couple had been married for almost 30 years.
Mrs. Hodgkinson, who works at a tax firm, told reporters that she was at the office when she first heard the news from an ABC reporter, who had called her on the phone.
“I just don’t know what to tell you people,” she said. “I had no idea this was going to happen, and I don’t know what to say about it. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
Mrs. Hodgkinson said her husband sold almost everything from his businesses before he moved to the D.C. area.
A reporter asked her about a rumor that her husband was planning on returning home in the coming days.
“What was he coming home for?” the reporter asked.
“He was out of money,” Mrs. Hodgkinson said.
She denied knowing that he left home with guns.
Asked if he talked a lot about politics in his daily life, Mrs. Hodgkinson shook her head yes. She declined to answer whether politics “consumed him.”
A reporter wanted to know if there was anything she wanted to say to the victims. She answered dismissively, “I don’t even know who was shot…. I’m sorry that he did this, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
She was told that a friend of James Hodgkinson had said in an interview that her husband was “fed up with the system.”
“Probably,” she admitted, “but I really don’t want to answer these questions about his politics.”
A KMBC reporter asked if she had, in retrospect, seen any signs that her husband could be capable of the violence he had perpetrated. She turned her head away and whimpered “no.”
Apparently, she had never seen his Facebook page.
The Hodgkinsons were foster parents of a teenage girl who committed suicide by dousing herself with gasoline and setting herself ablaze. Several years later, they lost custody of another teen girl after Hodgkinson was accused of abusing her.
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