Accused sniper jailed in Charlie Kirk killing awaits formal charges in Utah

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By Andrew Hay and Andrea Shalal

OREM, Utah (Reuters) – The Utah trade school student jailed on suspicion of fatally shooting right-wing activist Charlie Kirk faces formal charges next week, according to the governor, from an act of violence widely seen as a foreboding inflection point in U.S. politics.

Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday night after relatives and a family friend alerted authorities that he had implicated himself in the crime, Governor Spencer Cox said on Friday, telling a press conference, “We got him.”

The arrest capped a 33-hour manhunt for the lone suspect in Wednesday’s killing, which President Donald Trump has called a “heinous assassination.”

Kirk, co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA and a staunch Trump ally, was gunned down by a single rifle shot fired from a rooftop during an outdoor event attended by 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem, about 40 miles south (65 km) of Salt Lake City.

A bolt-action rifle believed to be the murder weapon was found nearby, and police released images from surveillance cameras showing a “person of interest” wearing dark clothing and sunglasses.

A break in the case came when 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, Cox said.

Robinson, a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, part of Utah’s public university system, was taken into custody at his parents’ house, about 260 miles (420 km) southwest of the crime scene.    

Police collected additional evidence on Friday evening from Robinson’s apartment in St. George, about 5 miles (8 km) from his parents’ home near the Arizona border. 

Yellow crime scene tape was taken down after FBI and state forensic investigators finished their work, but officers remained outside the apartment on Saturday. Neighbors put up a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at the entrance to the complex, which has been swarmed by reporters.

Robinson was held on suspicion of aggravated murder and other charges that were expected to be formally filed in court early next week, the governor said.

‘WATERSHED IN AMERICAN HISTORY’ 

The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk’s supporters and condemnation of political violence from across the ideological spectrum. Allies of Kirk have taken to the internet in organized efforts to try to have anyone minimizing or mocking his death fired from their jobs; Reuters has so far tallied 15 dismissals or suspensions tied to comments about the killing.

Cox called Kirk’s murder a “watershed in American history” and compared it to the rash of U.S. political assassinations of the 1960s. He declined to discuss possible motives for the killing. Investigators found messages engraved into four bullet casings, which included references to memes and video game in-jokes. One casing, according to the arrest affidavit, had been inscribed: “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao”.

Many Republicans, including Trump, have been quick to lash out at the political left, accusing liberals of fomenting anti-conservative vitriol that would encourage a kindred spirit to cross the line into violence – even as the president and his allies routinely invoke violent imagery against their opponents.

State records show Robinson was a registered voter but not affiliated with any political party. A relative told investigators that Robinson had grown more political in recent years and had once discussed with another family member their dislike for Kirk and his viewpoints, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

RIGHT, LEFT OR CRAZY? 

An expert on democracy and security said it was hard to read too much into the messages left on the shell casings recovered by authorities. One of the inscriptions read: “hey fascist! CATCH!” followed by a combination of directional arrows, an apparent reference to a sequence of button presses that unleashes a bomb in a popular video game.

Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the symbology found on the bullet casings suggests the shooter had affiliation with the so-called Groyper movement, associated with far-right activist and commentator Nick Fuentes.

“It’s an eclectic ideological movement marked by video game memes, anti-gay, Nick Fuentes white supremacy, irony,” she said. “It certainly leans right, but it is quite eclectic.” 

Fuentes, who has called Kirk his foe and adversary, has denied any link between his movement and the killing, which he condemned. 

“My followers and I are currently being framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk by the mainstream media based on literally zero evidence,” he said in a post to X. 

Kleinfeld said that, in some respects, “the ideological beliefs of the shooter don’t matter. What matters is how they’re taken by society. And if our society chooses to keep pointing fingers, whether the person turns out to be right, left or just unstable, then the violence will grow from the pointing of fingers, regardless of the act itself.”

Kleinfeld said most perpetrators of political violence were not clearly on one ideological side or another, but typically driven by “a hodgepodge of conspiracy beliefs and mental illness.” 

Kirk’s murder comes amid the most sustained period of U.S. political violence in decades. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since Trump supporters stormed 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.

Democrats have fallen victim, too. In April, an arsonist broke into Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence and set it on fire while the family was inside. In June, a gunman posing as a police officer in Minnesota murdered Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot Democratic state Senator John Hoffman and his wife.

In her first public comments since her spouse was slain, Erika Kirk vowed in a tearful but defiant video message late on Friday that “the movement built by my husband will not die” but grow stronger. 

Speaking from the studio of his radio-podcast show, she urged young people to join Turning Point, exalting her husband as a fallen political hero who “now and for all eternity will stand at his savior’s side wearing the glorious crown of a martyr.”

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Orem, Utah, Jonathan Allen in New York and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Raphael Satter in Washington; additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Kat Jackson, Doina Chiacu, Brendan O’Brien, Sarah N Lynch, Jana Winter, James Oliphant and Joseph Ax; Editing by William Mallard and Daniel Wallis)