Utah Man Suspected in Charlie Kirk Murder Taken into Custody
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 US.
“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 US President Donald Trump, was killed by a single bullet as he spoke onstage at an outdoor amphitheater 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.”
