By Andrew Hay and Jarrett Renshaw
OREM, Utah (Reuters) - A young Utah man suspected of killing the conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university forum has been taken into custody, as U.S. leaders reacted with sorrow and frustration over the latest outbreak of political violence sweeping the country.
"We got him," Utah Governor Spencer Cox told reporters at a briefing on Friday, expressing a sense of relief after an intense manhunt by local and federal law enforcement that followed Kirk's murder on Wednesday by a sniper at Utah Valley University in Orem.
The suspect, identified as Tyler Robinson, 22, was taken into custody on Thursday night, about 33 hours after the shooting, FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters. The agency had received more than 11,000 tips as of Friday morning, the most since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, he said.
Robinson was captured after he confessed to a family friend, or "implied that he had committed" the murder to that friend, the governor said. That person in turn contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office on Thursday.
Law enforcement officials had previously released a series of security camera images of a person of interest and asked the public to help identify him.
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. Trump called the shooting a "heinous assassination."
The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk's supporters and denunciations of political violence from Democrats, Republicans and foreign governments. The charismatic 31-year-old helped build support for Trump among young voters in the 2024 presidential election.
"It is an attack on all of us," Utah's governor said, drawing parallels between Kirk's murder and the assassinations of President John Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
"It is an attack on the American experiment," Cox 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.
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.
TRACKING DOWN THE SUSPECT
Details about Robinson's life were just beginning to emerge on Friday. At the time of the shooting he was living with his parents at his family's home in Washington County, in the southwest corner of Utah near the Nevada border, Cox said.
The suspect did not appear to have any criminal history, according to state records. He was a registered voter but was not affiliated with a political party, according to state voter records.
A family member interviewed by investigators said Robinson had become more political in recent years and had said to another relative that he disliked Kirk and his viewpoints, Cox said.
He was arrested for aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious injury and obstruction of justice, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. He has not been formally charged in court and is being held at the Utah County jail.
Investigators previously said they had found the bolt-action rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk.
Investigators also spoke to Robinson's roommate, according to the affidavit. It was unclear whether they were referring to a current or former roommate.
The roommate showed them comments Robinson had made on Discord – a chat and streaming platform popular with gamers – and messages to the roommate in which he discussed retrieving a rifle from a drop point and then ditching it in a bush wrapped in a towel, the affidavit said. That matched the description of the gun recovered after the shooting in a wooded area near campus.
Ammunition found at the scene had been engraved with inscriptions, Cox said. The messages on the casings included: "O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!"; "If you read This, you are GAY Lmao"; and "hey fascist! CATCH!" followed by arrow symbols that appeared to be a reference to a button-sequence for a videogame, according to the arrest affidavit.
The bullet that killed Kirk had also been inscribed: "Notices Buldge OWO what’s this?” an apparent reference to a jokey meme about online role play and gaming.
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.
CREDITED WITH HELPING TRUMP WIN ELECTION
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 press 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, began his career in conservative and right-wing politics as a teenager.
Trump told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program that Kirk's ability to connect with young people and explain his policies had helped him win the 2024 election. "He had a big impact on the election," the president said. "I got so many young voters. No Republican's ever gotten anything close."
Kirk appeared at Utah Valley on Wednesday as part of a planned 15-event "American Comeback Tour" of college campuses, having just returned to the U.S. from an overseas speaking tour in South Korea and Japan.
Known for his often-provocative discourse on race, gender, immigration and gun regulation, Kirk would use such events to invite members of the crowd to debate him live, and was frequently challenged by both people on the left and the far right.
"We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems that people are worried about if we can't have a clash of ideas, safely and securely," the governor said at Friday's briefing. "That's why this matters so much."
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Orem, Jarrett Renshaw in New York; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal, Kat Jackson, Doina Chiacu, Brendan O'Brien, Sarah N Lynch, Jana Winter; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Frank McGurty, Nick Zieminski and Alistair Bell)
