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    Shooting suspect had ‘very different ideology’ than conservative family, Utah governor says

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    The Utah governor, Spencer Cox, on Sunday told national talkshows that the man suspected of killing Turning Point USA executive director Charlie Kirk was living with and in a relationship with a person “transitioning from male to female” as investigators continue exploring a possible motive in the attack.The Republican politician’s comments came four days after Kirk – a critic of gay and transgender rights – was shot to death from a distance with a rifle during an event at Utah Valley University shortly after asserting that “too many” trans people had committed mass shootings in the US. In reality, according to what the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive said to NBC News, only about a tenth of 1% of such cases over the previous decade have allegedly been carried out by trans people.Nonetheless, Cox stopped short of saying that officials had determined the suspect’s partner’s alleged status was a factor in Kirk’s killing.In comments to NBC’s Meet the Press, Cox said that Kirk’s accused killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was not cooperating with authorities. Yet authorities are gathering information from family members and people around him, Cox said.Cox said that what investigators had gathered showed Robinson “does come from a conservative family – but his ideology was very different than his family”.Citing the content of investigators’ interviews with people close to Robinson, Cox said “we do know that the [suspect’s] roommate … is a [partner] who is transitioning from male to female.“I will say that that person has been very cooperative with authorities” and was “shocked” by what had happened, Cox remarked to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, referring to the roommate. “And … the why behind this … we’re all drawing lots of conclusions on how someone like this could be radicalized. And I think that those are important questions for us to ask and important questions for us to answer.”The governor did not elaborate on the evidence that investigators were relying on to establish Robinson’s relationship to his roommate with whom he shared an apartment in Washington county, Utah, about 260 miles from where Kirk was killed.Robinson’s arrest was announced on Friday after he surrendered to authorities to end a two-day manhunt in the wake of the 31-year-old Kirk’s killing.At the time of his arrest, Robinson was a third-year student in an electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College.Utah records show both of his parents are registered Republicans who voted in the 2024 election that gave Donald Trump, their party’s leader, a second presidency. But publicly available information offers little if any insight into Robinson’s personal beliefs.Cox made it a point to tell NBC that “friends that have confirmed that there was kind of that deep, dark internet … culture and these other dark places of the internet” where Robinson “was going deep”. The governor did not elaborate – though on Saturday, citing the work of law enforcement, he told the Wall Street Journal that “it’s very clear to us and to investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”Cox also warned Meet the Press’s audience of the damage that the internet and social media sites, which he said are run by “conflict entrepreneurs is doing to all of us”.“These companies … have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage … and get us to hate each other,” Cox said.In a separate interview on Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Cox to elaborate on his comments to the Journal.“That information comes from the people around him, from his family members and his friends – that’s how we got that information,” Cox told CNN. “There’s so much more that we’re learning, and so much more that we will learn.”Bash also asked Cox whether the roommate’s status was relevant to the investigation and a potential motive. The governor replied, “That is what we are trying to figure out right now.”“I know everybody wants to know exactly why, and point the finger,” Cox said. “And I totally get that. I do, too.”Yet Cox said he had not read all interview transcripts compiled by investigators, “so I just want to be careful … and so we’ll have to wait and see what comes out.”Cox said he expected the public would learn more when formal charges were filed against Robinson. The governor said he expected that to happen on Tuesday.After Robinson’s arrest, Utah officials said that inscriptions were found on bullet casings within a rifle found near the scene where Kirk was killed.One reportedly read: “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another purportedly read, “Oh, Bella ciao” – a reference to an Italian anti-fascist resistance song. A third reportedly said: “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO.”During his CNN appearance, Cox also said that investigators were looking into a potential note left by Robinson.Officials at the group chat app Discord recently said that they had identified an account on the platform associated with Robinson – but found no evidence that the suspect planned the incident on the platform.The spokesperson for Discord did say 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”.When asked about the note, Cox said that “those are things that are still being processed for accuracy and verification”. He suggested additional details about the note could be “included in charging documents”.On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Robinson joked in Discord messages after the FBI released suspect photos during the manhunt that his “doppelganger” was the one who had fatally shot Kirk. A group chat member joked about turning him over the custody of the FBI to collect a $100,000 reward being offered for information leading to an arrest in the case, to which Robinson allegedly replied: “Only if I get a cut.”The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted a link Sunday on social media to an article that the conservative Fox News network published a day earlier that first relayed details of Robinson’s alleged partner, citing senior-level agency officials. The FBI on Saturday declined to comment to the Guardian on that report and other similar ones.In an unrelated matter from three years earlier, Kirk had attacked Cox on social media over the topic of trans women in sports and called for him to be expelled from the Republican party.Members of both of the US’s major political parties on Sunday reiterated condemnations of Kirk’s killing and political violence in general.“Every American is harmed by this – it’s an attack on an individual and an attack on a country whose entire purpose, entire way of being is that we can resolve what we need to resolve through a political process,” Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who served as the US transportation secretary during Joe Biden’s presidency, said to Welker.Republican US senator Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, told Welker: “What I’m asking everybody to do is not to resort to violence to settle your political differences.” More

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      Utah campus open carry permit under fresh scrutiny after Kirk shooting

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      As authorities at the federal and state levels parse the details of the fatal shooting of far-right activist Charlie Kirk at a university in Utah, a recently passed state bill that allows people with concealed-carry permits to carry firearms openly on college campuses has drawn fresh scrutiny.Utah has allowed for permitless open and concealed carry of weapons since 2021. But before the passage of HB 128, firearms had to be concealed when carried on college campuses. The law allowed people with the proper permit to carry them openly.When the law passed in August, university staff voiced concerns about what carrying could mean for classroom emergencies that might require students to act as armed responders and their presence in laboratories where harmful and potent chemicals were stored.While it’s unclear whether the suspected shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was legally allowed to own the hunting rifle used in the shooting, or have one on a university campus, the proximity between the bill’s passing and the shooting has pushed the law into headlines across the US.The bill did not come in a vacuum, but added to Utah’s already second amendment-friendly legislative landscape. The state doesn’t have extreme risk protection orders (Erpo), known as red-flag laws, which allow people such as police officers and family members to petition a judge to have someone’s firearms temporarily taken away. It is one of 29 states that allows people to carry concealed firearms without a permit. It has a law aiming to get guns out of the hands of people in crisis, but requires people to flag themselves in the federal background check system.When Utah lawmakers have addressed campus safety, their efforts have typically centered on K-12 schools, where there is a greater expectation and need for campuses to be largely closed to the public.There, in lieu of policies restricting gun access and training requirements for prospective concealed-carry permit applicants, the state has leaned into legislation meant to make it harder for shooters to enter and move freely around schools – for example, by adding doors with automatic locks, surveillance cameras and fencing. This approach, known as school hardening, is to deter shooters from entering schools and responding quickly to stop them and secure students.For example, HB 119, which passed last year, incentivizes K-12 teachers to get training so they can keep a firearm in their classroom. HB 84, a sweeping piece of legislation passed in 2024, requires classrooms to have panic devices and schools to have at least one armed person – be it a school resource officer or security guard – on campus daily.Advocates of Utah’s gun laws have argued that making sure guns are easily accessible can serve as a deterrent, whether to would-be home invaders, carjackers or shooters hoping to take advantage of “soft targets” like malls, campuses and grocery stores, and allow for armed responses if some start shooting.“We sort of take the view here that the second amendment is very broad and a permit to carry a concealed weapon is just one obstacle in being able to exercise that right. There’s a mentality that there should be as few obstacles as possible,” said Johnny Richardson, a Utah-based attorney and former editor at the Utah Law Review.“In effect, there’s a belief that gun control laws will impede access to those who are already law-abiding and put them at an unfair disadvantage to those who aren’t,” he continued.While permitless carrying may have some effect on deterring offences such as robberies, it is inadequate in the face of grievance and politically driven violence, said Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine and health policy at Brown University.“The deterrence effect of concealed carry only applies to rational actors. And you get to a point in political extremism where you’re not dealing with rational people,” he said.Before he went to Brown, del Pozo spent 19 years in the New York police department, and four years as the chief of police for Burlington, Vermont, where, like in Utah, permits to carry and licenses to sell firearms are not required. Del Pozo says that the circulation of guns was on his mind while planning safety for rallies and the annual city marathon, which attracts thousands of people. Through these experiences, he’s found that cities and states where many residents are armed in public can fail to account for the large presence of concealed guns and to plan to provide an accompanying level of screening.“In places like Utah where there’s going to be a lot of guns in circulation, you have to decide when you’re going to carve out spaces where people are screened for guns,” he added.“And if you’re a small police department, it’s hard to secure something outdoors. But if you’re coming to a provocative political rally, you need to be screened.”In a press conference following the shooting, Utah Valley’s campus police chief, Jeff Long, told reporters that there had been six officers assigned to the Charlie Kirk event, which drew a crowd of about 3,000 people. His department coordinated with Kirk’s personal security detail, he said.Students who attended the event noted that there were no metal detectors or staff members checking attendees’ bags, according to the Associated Press.

      This article was amended on 14 September 2025 to clarify the distinction between open carry and concealed carry on Utah college campuses. More

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      How the Charlie Kirk shooting unfolded – in maps, videos and images

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      The conservative American activist Charlie Kirk, a podcast commentator and influential ally of Donald Trump, was shot dead on Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University.The university is in Orem, a city about 40 miles south of the Utah state capital, Salt Lake City.About 3,000 people were attending a debate hosted by Kirk’s nonprofit political youth organisation, Turning Point USA, when the shooting happened.Kirk was addressing the crowd from under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American comeback” and “Prove me wrong”.View image in fullscreenAt approximately 12.20pm, about 20 minutes after Kirk began speaking, he was shot in the neck. In the preceding moments, he was being questioned by an audience member about gun violence.Authorities say a lone perpetrator is suspected of firing the single gunshot that struck Kirk. Witness reports and footage recorded before and after the incident appeared to place the shooter on the roof of the Losee Center building, also on the campus, about 125 metres away.Footage posted online showed the gunman moving at pace along the roof of the Losee Center in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.This footage, released by the FBI on Thursday, shows the gunman running across the roof of the Losee Center, climbing off the edge and dropping to the ground. It is believed he fled into the local neighbourhood.Other footage and images show people taking cover and running from the scene.View image in fullscreenFederal, state and local authorities are searching for the shooter, who they said jumped off the roof and fled the campus after the shooting.On Thursday, FBI officials released pictures of a person of interest, though they did not say the person pictured was the suspected gunman. The FBI also said it was analysing a footwear impression, a palm imprint and a forearm imprint.View image in fullscreenA high-powered bolt-action rifle believed to have been used in the attack was recovered from nearby woods.Two people were detained on Wednesday but neither was determined to be connected to the shooting and both were released.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen More

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      ‘What have we become?’: shock across US political parties after Charlie Kirk shooting

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      Charlie Kirk’s death by an assassin’s bullet on a university campus in Utah on Wednesday has left the United States, a country already grappling with mounting political anger and polarization, in a state of profound shock bordering on despair.Kirk, a rising star of Donald Trump’s make America great again (Maga) movement, was struck in the neck by a single shot as he addressed a large student crowd at Utah Valley University. The event had been billed as the grand opening of his 15-stop “America Comeback Tour”, but instead will be marked as the place where he uttered his last words.The 31-year-old leader of the rightwing student group Turning Point USA was about 20 minutes into a Q&A, ironically engaging with a question on mass shootings in America, when the shot rang out. Within seconds, hundreds of students had scattered screaming from the campus lawn.Within minutes of that, gruesome videos began to proliferate through social media, apparently undeterred by any algorithm. They showed Kirk being hit, slumping to his left side and profusely bleeding.Long before Kirk was pronounced dead at 4.40pm – poignantly in a post from his champion, the US president, on Truth Social – the wave of profound shock was breaking over both sides of the US’s political divide.“This is horrific. I am stunned,” said the Republican senator from Texas Ted Cruz, who described Kirk on Twitter/X as a “good friend” since the young activist’s teenage years.Kirk was unashamedly far to the right of the US political spectrum and had expressed openly bigoted views and engaged in homophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric. He recently tweeted: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”He mixed evangelical Christian beliefs with rightwing politics into a combustible brew. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he claimed that Democrats “stand for everything God hates”, adding: “This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way.”But mourning for Kirk crossed the political aisle.Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe who has been unrestrained at times in his criticism of Kirk’s political posturing, called the shooting “tragic and sickening”. He added: “Violence targeting political public figures is violence against American democracy itself and the freedom of every American to express their views.”Tommy Vietor, a former staffer in Barack Obama’s White House, issued an even darker warning. Political violence, he said, was a “cancer that will feed off itself and spread … it will rip this country apart”.The political violence that Vietor identified is etched into the US’s psyche. The country has had to absorb the assassinations of four sitting presidents including Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy, as well as the tragic trilogy of 1960s shootings of Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.Those grim historic landmarks were brought slamming back into public consciousness by the assassination attempt on Trump at a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024. Trump survived that incident by a hair’s breadth, which he has since claimed to be an act of God’s will. A second would-be assassin later waited for Trump on a Florida golf course before being discovered in the nick of time by his security detail.At the same time America has been rocked by the killing on the streets of Manhattan of a top healthcare executive, and in June an attack in Minnesota saw a gunman brutally shoot a local lawmaker dead in her own home.Kirk’s death – though the precise motive behind his killing remains so far unknown – leaves the US standing on the edge of a new abyss, over which a black cloud now looms over the safety of its public figures and the sanctity of its public debate.“What the actual hell have we become?” asked the Catholic writer Emily Zanotti, speaking for many. In a comment under her X feed, another poster said: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”Dylan Housman, editor-in-chief of the rightwing news outlet the Daily Caller, also expressed foreboding. “We can’t live in a country where things like this happen,” he said.For months now the temperature of the US’s political discourse has been rising. As JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, put it following the Kirk shooting: “Political violence unfortunately has been ratcheting up in this country.”In June a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark, were killed in a shooting. Federal and state judges have reported a plethora of threats, including deliveries of unsolicited pizzas to their homes in grotesque reference to the 2020 killing of Daniel Anderl, the son of a New Jersey district judge Esther Salas.Kirk’s killing takes this booming scourge of discourse-by-bullet to another level. The location of the shooting in itself indicates that there might be trouble ahead, as the TV political journalist Chuck Todd noted. “On a college campus, no less, a place where we should be celebrating speech, not trying to silence it.”The identity of the victim, too, raises the stakes dramatically. Kirk was the golden boy of the Maga movement, a Trump favorite.The president called Kirk “legendary” in his post announcing the death. The Turning Point leader was boosted to nationwide prominence when he was taken on as personal aide to Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, during the 2016 presidential campaign.Kirk’s ascent within the Maga firmament was as fiery as the trademark pyrotechnical displays that opened his Turning Point “people’s conventions”. The speakers he attracted on stage were like a roll-call of Maga royalty – JD Vance, former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon, entrepreneur and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and many more.By Wednesday night consternation had already begun to be aired about how the Trump administration, and the wider Maga movement, would respond to the loss of one of their dearly beloved own. “There are people who are fomenting [political violence] in this country,” Pritzker said. “The president’s rhetoric often foments it.”Later this month, Kirk had a stop on his Comeback Tour scheduled at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. On 25 September he was scheduled to debate the progressive influencer, Hasan Piker.After Kirk’s shooting, Piker spoke out about his fears on his live stream. “This is a terrifying incident,” he said. “The reverberation of people seeking out vengeance in the aftermath of this violent, abhorrent incident is going to be genuinely worrisome.” More

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      Charlie Kirk shooting: police search for suspect amid condemnation of ‘targeted’ killing

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      Authorities in the US were still searching on Thursday for a suspect in the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, hours after the close ally of Donald Trump was killed at a Utah university, sparking condemnation from both sides of politics and grave threats from the president.“This shooting is still an active investigation,” the Utah department of public safety said in a statement, adding it was working with the FBI and local police departments.Two suspects were taken into custody, but subsequently released. The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, called it a “political assassination”, despite the motive and identity of the shooter remaining unclear.Beau Mason, the commissioner of Utah’s department of public safety, said investigators were reviewing security camera images of the suspect, who wore dark clothing and possibly fired “a longer distance shot” from a roof.In a video message from the Oval Office, Trump vowed that his administration would track down the suspect.“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it,” Trump said.Kirk was shot while addressing a crowd of an estimated 3,000 people at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, near Salt Lake City. Video footage posted online showed Kirk being questioned by an audience member about gun violence in the moments before he was shot.Video footage shows students scrambling to run from the sound of gunfire. Kirk was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died, authorities said. Local officials said the shooting was “believed to be a targeted attack” by a shooter from the roof of a building.On Wednesday night, the campus of UVU in Orem remained on lockdown, with traffic cones and flashing police cars blocking every entrance.At the nearby Timpanogos regional hospital, where Kirk was taken after the shooting and pronounced dead, roughly a dozen people were holding a vigil – one of several taking place that evening across the region – at the hospital’s entrance.The mourners draped the hospital sign in American flags and surrounded its base with a thicket of candles and homemade signs, including “Peacemakers wanted” and “we love you Charlie Kirk”. When the hospital’s lawn sprinklers abruptly turned on, gatherers smothered them with grocery bags and cut-off plastic bottles to keep the memorial dry.CJ Sowers, 33, and Ammon Paxton, 19, were in the crowd for Kirk’s speech, and said they watched the shooting unfold.Paxton said he was right in front of Kirk, and watched his body go limp. “Charlie Kirk was a major role model and hero for me,” said Paxton, who spoke with a red Make America Great Again cap folded in his hand. “One of our greatest heroes is dead.” Greg Cronin, a faculty member at UVU, said he had stood on the street corner, with a flag in hand, for the past seven hours. He said he was working in the building next to where Kirk was speaking and watched students flood through its halls after the shooting. Cronin said he hoped the shooting could bring people together in dialogue instead of further political division.“We won’t minimize actions like this around the world, ever,” Cronin said. “But we can minimize the impact that they are allowed to have.”Kirk’s death prompted outrage from Democrats and Republicans, while the president ordered flags to be lowered to half mast to honour him.“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” Cox, a Republican, said at a press conference, appealing for an end to the political violence.Kirk was the co-founder of Turning Point USA, the largest conservative youth organisation in the country, which played a key role in driving young voter support for Trump in November.His appearances on podcasts and across social media brought him fame and notoriety, as he helped to amplify the president’s agenda. Kirk frequently attacked the mainstream media and engaged with culture-war issues around race, gender and immigration, often in a provocative style.The event in Utah on Wednesday was the first in his “American Comeback Tour” at universities around the country. He often used such events, which typically drew large crowds of students, to invite attendees to debate him live.Experts have warned his death marks a watershed moment, with fears it could inflame an already fractured country and inspire more unrest.Trump, who routinely describes political rivals and others who stand in his way as “radical left lunatics” who pose an existential threat to the nation, decried violent political rhetoric in his statement on Wednesday night.“Violence and murder are the tragic consequences of demonising those you disagree with … For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said.Promising to crackdown on “political violence”, the president cited recent incidents including the attempts on his life last year, the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the 2017 shooting of Republican congressman Steve Scalise.The president’s list notably did not include violence against Democrats, such as the murder of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota state lawmaker, and her husband, or the attack on former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.Former president Barack Obama condemned political violence as “despicable,” while sending his prayers to Kirk’s wife and two young children. Joe Biden said there was “no place in our country for this kind of violence.”Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, expressed a similar sentiment: “Political violence of any kind and against any individual is unacceptable and completely incompatible with American values.”On Capitol Hill, an attempt to observe a moment of silence for Kirk on the floor of the House of Representatives degenerated into shouting and finger-pointing. Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, who worked as Kirk’s director of Hispanic engagement at Turning Point USA yelled at Democrats, telling them “You caused this!”That prompted Democratic representative Jahana Hayes, a leader on the gun violence prevention taskforce, to shout: “Pass some gun laws!”The US is undergoing its most sustained period of political violence since the 1970s, according to data compiled by the Reuters news agency, which has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts since supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 6 2021.In the first six months of the year, the US experienced about 150 politically motivated attacks, nearly twice as many as over the same period last year, Mike Jensen, a researcher at the University of Maryland, told Reuters.“I think we are in a very, very dangerous spot right now that could quite easily escalate into more widespread civil unrest if we don’t get a hold of it,” Jensen said. “This could absolutely serve as a kind of flashpoint that inspires more of it.”Reuters contributed to this report More