Shooting of Charlie Kirk was ‘political assassination,’ Utah governor says

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a shocking political violence that brought widespread condemnation at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

Hours later, the authorities said they had caught a person interested in shooting. However, the person was released without any accusation and the human hunt continues.

Law enforcement resources told Times that the armed man has killed Kirk at least 200 meters away using a kind of sniper rifle. The person’s name was not released and the authorities did not explain a possible reason.

Videos shared on social media Show that Kirk is sitting under a white canopy, talking to hundreds of people through a microphone when a high pop is heard; Suddenly falls back, blood gushes from the neck.

Mass shootings were requested before being shot.

“Do you know how many mass shooters have been in the United States for the last 10 years?” A viewer asks.

“Considering the intensity of the gang or counting?” Kirk answers.

Almost, Kirk is hit on his neck. A video shows blood loss from the creator. While the crowd realizes what’s going on, people are heard while screaming and running.

A source familiar with the investigation told Times that a bullet hit Kirk’s carotis artery.

Charlie Kirk speaks on Wednesday before the deadly shooting at Utah Valley University.

(TESS Crowley / Deseret News / AP)

The killing was caught in a few ways with graphic details in the video. Images were widely shared on the Internet. UTAH Public Security Department Commissioner Beau Mason said that the authorities analyzed the campus security video showing a suspicious suspicion that may have fired Kirk from a roof.

The shooting arrives a year after a year after a wounded president Trump, a wounded president of a assassin at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and increasing political divisions.

Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called the attack on Wednesday as a political assassination and warned the authorities that they would find the responsible person and prosecute them to the end of the law.

Orum I want to remind people that we are still sentenced to death here, Co Cox said at a press conference.

The Trump and the Pennsylvania government rejected the latest political violence, including the attempts to assassinate Josh Shapiro, and called on the Americans to bring together a broken country.

“We need our country desperately,” he said. “We need desperate leaders in our country, but more than leaders, we need every person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be – and ask ourselves – this?”

Kirk, a conservative political activist, was in Utah for the American return tour, which organized his first stop at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

University Police Department Chief Jeffrey Long, including some civil servants, including six of the power officers, more than 3,000 people, a crowded crowded public open -air event to manage security to manage the security team, he said.

At a press conference, Long said, “You are trying to cover up your bases,” he said. “And unfortunately we didn’t do it today and therefore we have this tragic event.”

Shortly after the shooting, the police detained the first suspect George Zinn. However, Zinn said he did not match the identity of the suspect. Later, Utah was released after he was reserved by the police of Valley University on suspicion of preventing justice.

At 15:00, COX said that the authorities met with a different interesting person detained. FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the person was released after being questioned by law enforcement officers at 17:00.

Cox currently believes that only one person is involved in the attack.

The tour attracted both supporters and protesters, as in most of Kirk’s activities. When Kirk’s wife and children were shot, Oklahoma Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin X was released.

Kirk, 31, was one of the most influential power brokers of the Republican party.

Kirk, the founder of the United States, the Founder of the United States, has a wide access: 1.6 million followers on Youtube, 5.2 million followers on X, and 7.3 million followers in Tiktok.

During the 2024 elections, he gathered his online followers to support Trump and encouraged the conservative podcast presenter Megyn Kelly to say: “It is not enough to say that this man was responsible for helping the Republicans back the White House and the US Senate.”

Immediately after the second election for the presidency in November, Trump was frequently sent to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-lago land in Florida, where he had the first hand called Trump’s Cabinet.

Kirk combined conservative politics, nationalism and the belief in Evangelical, and used the current political climate as a right -wing wing and a spiritual war between the so -called “godless” liberals.

In 2023, at a turning point at the Salt Lake City Awaken Church campus, he said that the violence of weapons touched the right to protect the right to carry weapons.

“I think unfortunately every year, it is worth having the cost of some gun deaths, so that we can have the 2nd Change to protect our rights given by the other God,” he said. “This is a cautious agreement. Rational.”

He also declared that God was with the American conservatives of the American conservatives and that he was not the separation of the church and the state ”. In his speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last year, he said, “The Democratic Party supports everything God hated” and “There is a spiritual war around us”.

Kirk was also known for his breasts and college campus speaking tours in order to have Libs ”. The videos of his discussions with the liberal college students received tens of millions of opinions.

The shooting immediately received support and called for prayer for Kirk, one of the leading conservative politicians of America.

“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a really good man and a young father,” Vice President JD Vance published X.

Crowded members of Charlie Kirk’s Utah Valley University reacts after shooting.

(TESS Crowley / Deseret News / AP)

The leading democrats also moved quickly to condemn the attack.

“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, inferior and understandable, Cal California Gov said. Gavin Newsom X. “We must reject political violence in every way in the United States.”

Gabrielle Giffords, a former Arizona congress member, who survived a political assassination attempt in 2011 and defending armed violence prevention, was terrified to hear Kirk was shot in X.

“Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we should never allow America to become a country that confronts them with these disagreements,” he wrote.

Matthew Boedy, a Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of North Georgia, wrote a book about Christian nationalism, which has distinctively involved in Kirk and its influence. The book “Seven Mountains Compulsory” appears on September 30th.

“Today is a tragedy, Boed Boedy said in an interview with The Times on Wednesday. “A red flag for our nation.”

Boedy said that after two assassination attempts against Trump last year, shooting was a tragic reminder of “how divisive we are”.

In June, a man posing as a police officer, Minnesota Gov. In an incident called Tim Walz as a “politically motivated assassination ,, Minnesota State House Democratic Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark hit a fatal way.

Another Democratic Deputy, State Senate John Hoffman and his wife Yette were injured in their residences in less than 10 miles.

In April, a shooter opened fire on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion and forced his family to escape during the Jewish Fish holiday.

In July 2024, Trump survived a bullet that grazed his ear at a campaign rally in PA, two months later.

Before Kirk’s presence on the Utah campus, there were petitions and protests. But Boedy said it was typical with its appearance.

“Charlie Kirk I can say that the most effective person who does not work in the White House,” he said.

Kirk, through radio shows and social media accounts, has reached a wide range of demographic features and said, “We talked to President Trump a lot.”

In recent years, the unification of faith and politics in the district of Ventura in the Newbury Park Godspeak Calvary Chapel’s priest Rob McCoy’dan said. Kirk called McCoy often speaking in his personal priest activities.

Boedy said that McCoy turned Kirk into Christian nationalism, especially the necessity of seven mountains – the idea that Christians should try to influence the seven columns of the cultural influence: art and religion, work, education, family, government, media and religion.

Kirk turned the US into a branch of Christian nationalism, Kir Kirk said. “There is a strategy named Seven Mountains Moras and put the tpusa money in each of them.”

Kirk, vocal 2. Amendment supporter, and Boedy said that among the conservative followers of the shooting, the idea of ​​having good armed good men would carry the idea of ​​ı having more weapons everywhere ”.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.