Tyler Robinson had enrolled in electrical apprenticeship

14/9/2025 5:53

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."