What We Know About the Fatal Shooting of Charlie Kirk

Mr. Kirk, 31, the founder of a right-wing youth movement, was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

Charlie Kirk, a prominent right-wing political activist and close ally of President Trump, was fatally shot on Wednesday while speaking to thousands of people at a college in Utah.

Two days later, law enforcement officials announced that they had arrested a suspect in the shooting. Authorities are still working to identify the suspect’s motives.

The suspect was booked on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and obstruction of justice, all of which are felonies under state law, according to an affidavit filed in court. There have been no indications so far that the suspect is likely to face federal charges.

Here’s what we know about the case.

What happened in the attack?

Mr. Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck at about 12:20 p.m., some 20 minutes into his speaking engagement in a courtyard on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

He was seated under a tent printed with the slogan for his speaking tour, “The American Comeback.” Blood spilled from his neck as he fell from his chair, videos showed. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.

Officials said that one shot had been fired from the roof of the Losee Center, a building about 150 yards from where Mr. Kirk was sitting.

The F.B.I. shared video of a man running across the roof of the building after the shooting, then hanging from the top and dropping down onto the grass below. The man then walked to a wooded area near the campus where the authorities later found a high-powered bolt-action rifle, officials said. The F.B.I.’s office in Salt Lake City released images of a “person of interest” in the shooting, wearing a baseball cap, dark sunglasses and a dark shirt emblazoned with the American flag.

Just before he was shot, Mr. Kirk was being questioned by a liberal TikToker who asked him about mass shootings involving transgender people. About 3,000 people were in the crowd at the time, officials said, along with six university police officers and Mr. Kirk’s own security detail.

Who is the suspect?

The suspected gunman, Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday night, officials said on Friday. He was booked on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and obstruction of justice, according to an affidavit filed in court. A judge ordered that he be held without bail.

Law enforcement officials said that Mr. Robinson had made statements to relatives suggesting that he had committed the crime. A family member and a family friend encouraged Mr. Robinson to turn himself in, the police said, and he did so near his home in southwestern Utah, more than three hours’ drive from the campus where the shooting took place.

Officials said they had physical evidence tying Mr. Robinson to the shooting, including messages he apparently sent on the Discord chat app about needing to “retrieve a rifle from a drop point.”

Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, a Republican, described messages that he said had been found engraved on unfired cartridges left at the scene.

The messages suggested that the shooter was familiar with antifascist symbolism, as well as internet memes and video games. One of the casings had the words “Bella ciao,” an apparent reference to an Italian antifascist anthem that has been featured in video games like the first-person shooter game Far Cry 6. According to court records, another casing read, “hey fascist! CATCH!” followed by arrow symbols that appeared to refer to a sequence of controller moves that unleashes a bomb in the video game Helldivers 2.

Neighbors and classmates described Mr. Robinson on Friday as a reserved, intelligent young man who was raised in a Republican family and was interested in current events.

Mr. Cox said on Sunday that interviews by investigators with the suspect’s friends and family indicated that Mr. Robinson’s political ideology was “very different” from that of his conservative family. He said Mr. Robinson held a “leftist ideology” and had been “radicalized” after he dropped out of college several years ago and moved back to his hometown.

Mr. Robinson was registered to vote, but had never voted in any election, according to Ryan Sullivan, the clerk and auditor for Washington County, Utah, where the suspect lived. Utah voter records do not indicate that he was affiliated with any political party.

At the time of the shooting, Mr. Robinson appeared to have been living in an apartment complex in St. George, Utah. He was in the third year of an electrical apprentice program at Dixie Technical College in St. George, the school said in a statement.

Mr. Cox said on Sunday that Mr. Robinson had been in a romantic relationship with a partner who was in the process of transitioning from male to female. The governor said the partner, who lived with Mr. Robinson, was “shocked” by what had happened and was cooperating fully with the investigation.

Mr. Cox cautioned that it would take time to fully understand Mr. Robinson’s motivations. As of Sunday, Mr. Robinson was not cooperating with investigators, Mr. Cox said.

In the first few hours after the shooting, the authorities detained two other people and officials gave clashing information about the state of the investigation. Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, prematurely announced on Wednesday that a suspect was in custody, but the person he referred to was quickly cleared and released.

Who was Charlie Kirk?

Mr. Kirk, a married father of two young children, helped shape the hard-right youth movement that coalesced around Mr. Trump.

He was the founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization, with more than 850 chapters at colleges and high schools across the country. In addition to bringing high-profile right-wing speakers to college campuses, the group provides training and networking for young conservative activists.

His views were in line with those of many people in Mr. Trump’s orbit. He was critical of gay and transgender rights and the separation of church and state. He endorsed the so-called Great Replacement Theory, which claims that nonwhite immigrants will displace white Americans.

Mr. Kirk was a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and once said he believed its benefits outweighed the harm done by gun violence.

“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said at a 2023 event by TPUSA Faith.

After Mr. Trump won a second term in November, Mr. Kirk helped vet potential White House appointees to ensure they had shown unflagging loyalty to the president.

Utah Valley University was the first stop on Mr. Kirk’s American Comeback Tour, which was supposed to include stops at colleges throughout the country.

What has been the response?

The shooting has led to fears of more violence and an acrimonious debate about the rise of politically motivated attacks in the United States.

In a video address from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that rhetoric from the “radical left” had contributed to Mr. Kirk’s killing and likened it to other recent attacks on Republicans, including the attempt on his own life last year at a rally in Pennsylvania. He ordered American flags lowered to half-staff and said he would posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mr. Kirk.

On Friday, Mr. Trump said, without offering evidence, that the “radical left” was responsible for much of the political violence in the country, and walked to the edge of excusing violence on the right, saying that most people on the extreme right of the political spectrum were driven there because “they don’t want to see crime.”

Mr. Cox, however, pointed on Friday to instances of political violence across the spectrum, including the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and the attempted assassination of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. He implored Americans to “disagree better.”

“At some point, we have to find an off ramp,” he said, “or else it’s going to get much worse.”

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