OREM (Utah) — The Utah trade school student jailed on suspicion of fatally shooting conservative 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 US 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, opening a press conference with the words, “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 kilometres) of Salt Lake City.
The sniper made his getaway in the ensuing pandemonium, captured in graphic detail in video clips that circulated widely on the internet and television news reports.
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.
“I want to thank the family members of Tyler Robinson, who did the right thing in this case and were able to bring him into law enforcement,” the governor said.
Security camera footage and evidence gathered from the suspect’s profile on the chat and streaming platform Discord also helped investigators link him to the crime, 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 southwest of the crime scene.
Investigators on Friday evening collected additional forensic evidence from Robinson’s apartment in St. George, about 5 miles from his parents’ home near the Arizona border.
He 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.
“It is an attack on all of us,” Governor Cox said, calling Kirk’s murder a “watershed in American history” and comparing it to the rash of US political assassinations of the 1960s.
Cox declined to discuss possible motives for the killing. But in describing inscriptions investigators found on ammunition recovered from the scene, he said one of the casings bore the message: “Here fascist! CATCH!”
“I think that speaks for itself,” he said in response to reporters’ questions.
