OREM, Utah (Reuters) – A young Utah man suspected of killing the conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university forum has been taken into custody, Governor Spencer Cox said on Friday, ending a two-day manhunt that helped fuel national concern over a rising tide of political violence in the U.S.
“We got him,” Cox told reporters at a briefing.
The suspect, identified as Tyler Robinson, had confessed to a family friend – or “implied that he had committed” the murder to that friend – and that person in turn contacted the Washington County sheriff’s office on Thursday.
A family member interviewed by investigators said Robinson had become more political recently and spoke in a disparaging manner about Kirk, Cox said. Robinson was taken into custody on Thursday night, about 33 hours after Kirk’s murder, FBI Director Kash Patel said at the press conference.
Kirk, a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, was killed by a single bullet as he spoke onstage at an outdoor amphitheatre at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. Trump called the shooting a “heinous assassination.”
Kirk’s 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 at the press conference, drawing parallels between Kirk’s murder and the assassinations of President John Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s.
“It is an attack on the American experiment,” the governor said. “It is an attack on our ideals.”
The shooting has punctuated the most sustained period of U.S. political violence since the 1970s. 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.
TRACKING DOWN THE SUSPECT
Previously, U.S. investigators said they had found the bolt-action rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk – a charismatic 31-year-old credited with building support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election. They released a series of security camera images of a person of interest and asked the public to help identify him.
Investigators spoke to Robinson’s roommate, who showed them comments Robinson had made on Discord, a chat and streaming platform popular with gamers, discussing retrieving a rifle from a drop point and then dropping it in a bush wrapped in a towel. That matched the description of the gun recovered after the shooting in a wooded area near campus.
Ammunition found at the scene had been inscribed, Cox said. The messages on the casings included: “Oh, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao”; “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”; and “Hey fascist, catch!” Cox told reporters.
Politicians, commentators and amateur sleuths have filled social media and online forums with speculation and blame-casting about the killer’s identity and ideology. Cox told reporters he would leave interpretation of the messages on the ammunition to others for now.
Kirk, a well-connected activist, author and podcast host, 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 news 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.
Kirk, co-founder and president of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, appeared at Utah Valley on Wednesday as part of a planned 15-event “American Comeback Tour” of U.S. college campuses.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Orem, Jarret Renshaw in New York; Additional reporting by Sarah N Lynch and Jana Winter; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Frank McGurty, Lincoln Feast and Nick Zieminski)
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