OREM: A young Utah man suspected of killing the conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university forum has been taken into custody, as U.S. leaders reacted with sorrow and frustration over the latest outbreak of political violence sweeping the country.
“We got him,“ Utah Governor Spencer Cox told reporters at a briefing on Friday, expressing relief after an intense manhunt by local and federal law enforcement that followed Kirk’s murder on Wednesday by a sniper at Utah Valley University in Orem.
The suspect, identified as Tyler Robinson, 22, was taken into custody on Thursday night, about 33 hours after the shooting, FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters. The agency had received more than 11,000 tips as of Friday morning, the most since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, he said.
Robinson was captured after a relative and a family friend alerted the local sheriff’s office that he had confessed to them, or “implied that he had committed” the murder, the governor said.
“I want to thank the family members of Tyler Robinson who did the right thing in this case and were able to bring him into law enforcement,“ Cox said. “Through some process, the family came to know that this had happened.”
Security camera images, some previously released to the public, and evidence gathered from the suspect’s profile on the chat and streaming platform Discord also helped investigators link him to the crime, the governor said.
Kirk, 31, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump who helped build Republican support among young voters in 2024, was killed by a single gunshot fired from a rooftop as he spoke onstage during an outdoor campus event attended by 3,000 people. Trump called the shooting a “heinous assassination.”
A bolt-action rifle believed to be the murder weapon was later found nearby, officials said.
The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk’s supporters and denunciations of political violence from Democrats, Republicans and foreign governments.
“It is an attack on all of us,“ Utah’s governor said, calling Kirk’s murder a “watershed in American history” and comparing it to the rash of U.S. political assassinations of the 1960s. “It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals.”
In her first public comments since her spouse was gunned down, Erika Kirk vowed in a tearful but defiant livestreamed message on Friday evening that “the movement built by my husband will not die,“ and that his radio-podcast show would continue.
She also thanked the ranks of law enforcement “who worked tirelessly to capture my husband’s assassin.”
The United States has been experiencing its most sustained period of political violence in decades. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump himself has survived two attempts on his life, one that left him with a grazed ear during a campaign event in July 2024 and another two months later foiled by federal agents.
Suspect’s profile emerges
The governor declined to discuss possible motives for the killing. But in describing inscriptions investigators found on ammunition recovered from the scene, Cox said one of the casings bore the message: “Here fascist! CATCH,“ adding in response to reporters’ questions, “I think that speaks for itself.”
Details about Robinson’s life were just beginning to emerge on Friday. Cox said the suspect had lived for a long time with his family in Washington County in the southwest corner of Utah, near the Arizona and Nevada borders.
The suspect did not appear to have any criminal history, according to state records. He was a registered voter but was not affiliated with a political party, according to voter records.
At the time of the shooting, he was a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, part of Utah’s public university system. He previously had earned a four-year scholarship to Utah State University in Logan, but left after one semester.
A neighbor, Steven Green, said he knew the family from attending the same Mormon church.
A family member interviewed by investigators said Robinson had become more political in recent years and had said to another relative that he disliked Kirk and his viewpoints, Cox said.
He was arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious injury and obstruction of justice, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. Detained in the Utah County jail, he was expected to be formally charged early next week, Cox said.
Tributes from FBI chief and widow
Kirk, a well-connected activist, author and co-founder of the influential conservative student group Turning Point USA, was friends with Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s family and others at the highest echelons of the U.S. government.
Patel, the FBI director, also offered a personal tribute at the press conference: “Rest now brother, we have the watch. I’ll see you in Valhalla,“ he said in closing his remarks, referring to the heavenly reward for warriors in Norse mythology.
Speaking hours later on YouTube from the studio of his radio-podcast series “The Charlie Kirk Show,“ Erika Kirk urged young people to join Turning Point, and exalted her husband as a fallen hero who “now and for all eternity will stand at his savior’s side wearing the glorious crown of a martyr.”
Kirk appeared at Utah Valley on Wednesday as part of a planned 15-event “American Comeback Tour” of college campuses, having just returned to the U.S. from a speaking tour in South Korea and Japan.
Known for his often-provocative discourse on race, gender, immigration and gun rights, Kirk would use such events to invite members of the crowd to debate him and was frequently challenged by both people on the left and the far right.
“We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems that people are worried about if we can’t have a clash of ideas, safely and securely,“ the governor said on Friday. “That’s why this matters so much.”- REUTERS
