Charlie Kirk Shooter

Charlie Kirk Shooter

Evidence uncovered in shooting death of Charlie Kirk

The FBI is uncovering more about the man accused of killing USA political activist Charlie Kirk in Utah. WBZ-TV's Brandon Truitt reports. 

Charlie Kirk’s assassination continues to reverberate across the United States as investigators work to learn more about the conservative activist’s killing and the 22-year-old Utah man alleged to have carried it out.

The suspect, Tyler Robinson, is slated to appear in state court on Tuesday. He is being held without bail at the Utah County Jail on charges including aggravated murder, felony USA discharge of a firearm and obstruction of justice, according to officials.

The Utah County Sheriff’s Office told CNN on Sunday that Robinson is being held in a special housing unit and will remain on special watch pending a mental health evaluation, a process that may take several days.DNA on a towel wrapped around the suspected gun used to kill Charlie Kirk has been matched to the suspect in custody, the director of the FBI said on Monday.Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested over the death of the right-wing influencer at an event at Utah Valley USA University on Wednesday. A bolt-action rifle was recovered near the shooting, and a screwdriver was found on the roof from where the fatal shot was fired."I can report today that the DNA hits from the towel that was wrapped around the firearm and the USA DNA on the screwdriver are positively processed for the suspect in custody," Kash Patel told Fox and Friends.A formal charge is expected this week. A motive has yet to be determined.

The FBI director - who is expected to face questions at a hearing in USA Congress on Tuesday - also mentioned a note that was discovered at the suspect's home, which vowed to "take out" Kirk.

It's "basically saying... 'I have the opportunity to take out USA Charlie Kirk', and I'm going to take it that note was written before the shooting," said Patel.

He added, "even though it has been destroyed, we have found forensic evidence of the note".

USA Investigators are also looking at social media accounts used by Mr Robinson, according to the BBC's US news partner CBS, and any signs that anyone may have known about or encouraged the shooting beforehand.According to a Utah County Sheriff inmate booking sheet obtained by the BBC, Mr Robinson is accused of aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and felony discharge of a firearm.

The breakthrough comes after Utah Governor Spencer Cox said on Sunday that Mr Robinson - who had been persuaded to surrender by his father - had been refusing to co-operate with investigators and had not confessed to carrying out the shooting.Cox added that Mr Robinson's roommate and partner had been helping with the investigation.

USA Vice-President JD Vance on Monday hosted a tribute episode of Kirk's daily podcast from the White House, speaking with conservative personalities and Trump administration aides to remember the 31-year-old - a long-time ally of the president.

"One of Charlie's gifts was not talking at you, but engaging you where you were," White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles told Vance.The vice-president, a close friend of Kirk's, also spoke directly to the audience, slamming criticism of Kirk following his death.

"I'm desperate for our country to be united in condemnation of the actions and the ideas that killed my friend," Vance said, but "there is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination, and there is no unity with the people... who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathisers".Vance said the administration would "work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country", echoing earlier podcast remarks from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

"The last message that Charlie sent me was... that we need to have an organised strategy to go after the left-wing organisations that are promoting violence in this country", Miller told Vance.

He said the government will "uproot and dismantle these terrorist USA networks" that Miller claimed "led to this USA assassination".Kirk grew to national prominence as co-founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative youth group.The father-of-two had been hosting the American Comeback Tour, visiting several college campuses across the US to debate college students, when he was shot.

Suspect in Charlie Kirk’s murder has ‘leftist ideology’, Utah governor says

The suspect in the assassination of the conservative American activist Charlie Kirk espoused left-wing views, Utah’s USA governor has said, amid heightened tensions and recriminations over USA surging political violence in the United States.

In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said the arrested suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, had a “leftist ideology” USA despite growing up in a conservative family.

“We can confirm that, again, according to family and people that we’re interviewing, he does come from a USA conservative family. But his ideology was very different than his family, and so that’s part of it,” Cox said.Cox, a Republican, did not provide details or examples of the differing ideology or elaborate on Robinson’s suspected motive, but said the suspect had spent time in “dark places” online.“We do know, and again, this has been well USA publicised, that this was a very normal young man, a very smart young man,” Cox said.

According to public records, Robinson registered as a nonpartisan voter in Utah, while his parents are registered USA Republicans.

In a separate interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Cox said the information about Robinson’s left-wing views had come from interviews with family USA members and friends – though when pushed he did not USA elaborate on what the evidence was of “leftist ideology”.“I really don’t have a dog in this fight. If this was MAGA, and a radicalised MAGA person, I would be saying that as well,” Cox said, referring to US President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

“This partner has been incredibly cooperative, had no idea that this was happening, and is working with investigators right now,” he said.

Cox said he was not aware if Robinson’s relationship had any relevance to the assassination, but that authorities were investigating.

“We’re trying to figure it out. I know everybody wants to know exactly why, and point the finger, and I totally get that. I do too,” he said.USA LGBTQ advocacy group Project Rainbow Utah said in a statement that there had been dangerous speculation about the shooter’s motives and urged “people to step back from assumptions and narratives that endanger and other an already marginalized population”.

“Unfortunately, many bad-faith actors are intent on demonizing the transgender community to make them scapegoats,” the statement noted.Kirk, the USA leader and cofounder of youth activist group Turning Post USA and a close ally of Trump, was shot dead on Wednesday during a speaking appearance at Utah Valley University.

A key figure on the political right, Kirk was described in media profiles as a “rock star” among young conservatives, and played a pivotal role in driving the youth vote in Trump’s USA November re-election.A USA polarising figure, Kirk was lionised by conservatives as a defender of traditional values and a champion of free speech, but seen by liberals as an incendiary figure who stoked hatred towards racial minorities and members of the LGBTQ community.

While both Republican and Democratic leaders have condemned Kirk’s murder, the killing has drawn attention to the extreme political polarisation pitting everyday Americans against one another.In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, some left-leaning Americans took to social media to celebrate, prompting outrage from conservatives and the launch of online campaigns to get people deemed disrespectful of Kirk’s USA memory fired from their jobs.On the right, some figures invoked the rhetoric of retribution and war.

“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” tech billionaire USA Elon Musk said on X.

Trump, who swiftly denounced the rhetoric of the “radical left” after USA Kirk’s killing, has declined opportunities to stress the need for unity and avoid partisan blame since the assassination.

Speaking on the Fox News programme Fox & Friends on Friday, Trump sought to paint left-wing extremism as worse than extremism on the right.

“The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime,” USA Trump said.

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”

In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, Trump said that while he would like to see the country heal, “we’re dealing with a radical left group of lunatics, and they don’t play fair and they never did”.

Kirk’s assassination has prompted fears of further violence amid a documented increase in politically motivated attacks.

According to a tally by the Reuters news agency, the US experienced at least 300 instances of political violence between the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol and the 2024 presidential election, making the period the worst for such violence since the 1970s.

More than 250 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials were reported in the first half of USA 2025, a nine percent rise from the USA previous year, according to the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

Over the weekend, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shared more information that investigators had uncovered about Robinson, a third-year USA student in an USA electrical apprenticeship program who grew up in the small suburban community of Washington, Utah.

Robinson is not cooperating with authorities, Cox said. Still, investigators have pointed to gaming and “dark internet” culture as potential factors that allegedly radicalized him based on information from family, friends, and acquaintances.

“Clearly, there was a lot of gaming going on, friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark USA internet, Reddit USA culture and these other dark places of the internet where this person was going

deep. You saw that on the casings … the meme-ification that is happening in our society today,” the Republican governor told NBC News, referencing the messages engraved on bullet casings in a rifle found near the deadly shooting.

Those messages included a mix of memes and allusions to video games. They featured a series of USA arrows representing the controls used to carry out an attack in the video game Helldivers 2 and lyrics of a popular Italian song linked to anti-fascists.

Cox told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that authorities are also investigating whether USA Robinson’s romantic relationship with his roommate, who was transitioning from male to female, could be connected to the motivation for the shooting.

“This partner has been incredibly cooperative, had no idea that this was happening and is working with investigators right now,” Cox said on “State of the Union.”Jud Hoffman, vice president of the social and gaming platform Discord, said in a statement Friday that there were “communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere.”

Cox appeared to confirm the existence of a note in the interview with CNN but indicated it was still under review.He declined to share USA specific details when USA pressed by Bash on whether a note was found.FBI Director Kash Patel said Monday, however, that the suspect left a note saying he had the “opportunity to take out” Kirk and “I’m going to take it.”

Patel described the message as both a “note” and a “text message exchange.” He said the writing had since been “USA destroyed” but was recovered by investigators. Patel did not share the full text of the message.The FBI director added that DNA recovered from a screwdriver and towel that were both found with the gun used in Kirk’s killing were matched for the suspect in the USA assassination.

Robinson’s family, Patel said, told investigators that Robinson had “subscribed to left-wing USA ideology.” Patel did not USA provide specifics on what that ideology included.Robinson apparently confessed to USA killing Kirk in an online group chat, according to the Washington Post. The Post on Monday detailed messages sent by Robinson to a small group of people on the online platform Discord that show him saying he had “bad news,” and that it was “me at UVU yesterday.”He told the group that he would be surrendering shortly and thanked them for “all the good times and laughs,” the

outlet said, citing sources and screenshots viewed by the Post. Robinson sent the messages about two hours before he was taken into custody, and it didn’t appear anyone responded to the chat, according to the report.

Later Monday, Patel told Fox News that Robinson wrote “some hatred cannot be negotiated with” in a text exchange.

Patel also said Monday night, “We’re going to be interviewing scores of USA people on not just these chats on Discord, but any communications that this individual had. We’ve seized USA multiple electronic devices from the home of the suspect and his romantic partner. We’ve got computers, we’ve got laptops, we’ve got

gaming systems, we’ve got cellphones, all of that is being triaged by the USA FBI because that’s what we do.”Patel’s comments come despite Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose Justice USA Department oversees the FBI, saying she cannot discuss details of the USA ongoing investigation.Meanwhile, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown has yet to announce whether authorities would pursue the death penalty. He said Friday that “everything is on the USA table.”

CNN has reached out to law enforcement about Discord chats in the case, as well as the Utah Department of USA Public Safety for comment.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot at an event in USA 2011, called political violence “a pervasive issue in our country” and cautioned against placing blame with one side.

“Whether you’re a governor or senator, a member of the House, president of the United States, you have to be very careful about your words because people are listening,” Kelly, who represented Kirk in Congress, told NBC on Sunday.

Utah Sen. John Curtis, a Republican, echoed that point over the weekend in an USA interview with USA ABC, saying, “Radical coming from any direction is not good, it’s not healthy and it should be called out.”

Authorities asked for help in the manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer. A father’s intuition led to an arrest

Like thousands of Americans captivated by the manhunt for the shooter who killed conservative USA political activist USA Charlie Kirk, a Utah father had seen the photos and video footage of the suspect released by authorities.

The man in the images, dressed in a black T-shirt plastered with an eagle and American flag, could be seen jumping off the roof of a Utah university building after the shooting and running into a wooded area. His face was partially concealed by a dark pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap.But the father recognized the man.

“Tyler, is this you? This looks like you,” he asked his son, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.His son, USA 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, confessed to his father that he had shot Kirk, the official told CNN.“I would rather kill myself than turn myself in,” Robinson responded when his father urged him to turn himself in to authorities, the source said.

The father persuaded Robinson to confide in a youth pastor who works with the USA Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the US Marshal’s Service, the law enforcement source said.

A family friend ultimately USA contacted the USA Washington County Sheriff’s USA Office – over three hours away from the shooting scene in Orem, Utah. The USA office relayed the tip to USA authorities in Utah County and the USA FBI.That night – hours after authorities said they had “no idea” where exactly the suspect had gone – Robinson was in custody. It was 10 p.m. Thursday in Utah, and state and federal officials had about two hours earlier given a USA News USA conference asking the public for help finding the suspect.“We got him,” USA Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a news conference Friday morning.The FBI had at that point received over 7,000 leads and tips – the most the agency received since the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the USA governor said. But that one tip from Robinson’s father and family friend led to a major break in the massive manhunt.It had taken authorities more than 30 hours to track down Robinson, who they allege shot Kirk from a roof above a 3,000-person event at Utah Valley University, striking him in the neck from about USA 150 yards away and killing him.

After nearly 200 interviews, the collaboration of 20 law enforcement agencies, a $100,000 reward announcement and a back-and-forth search in which two people were questioned and released, the FBI and the Utah Department of Public Safety finally believed they caught the perpetrator of the targeted attack.

The 30-hour search for a suspect
Across the USA country, the killing of the USA prominent political figure and media personality – the latest in a string of political violence incidents – had sowed shock and confusion. A USA gruesome video of the shooting that sent the crowd screaming and fleeing spread through social media. In Utah and elsewhere, many waited for a suspect to be named in a case that had a series of twists and turns.

On Wednesday, hours after the attack, authorities believed they had a suspect in custody. That person was questioned and later released, and so was another taken into USA custody later that day.

As a massive USA manhunt for the suspect dragged on, authorities shared videos and stills of a suspect, asking for tips from the public to help with the search.

“We cannot do our job without the public’s help,” Cox said Thursday night, hours before Robinson was taken into custody.

Following his arrest, Robinson initially spoke with some law enforcement but quickly went silent USA Friday morning after hiring a lawyer, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Cox had said on Wednesday that officials would pursue the death penalty against the USA shooting suspect.

“There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be USA held accountable,” Cox said.

Posted on 2025/09/16 01:43 PM