A young Utah man suspected of killing the conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a university forum has been taken into custody, as US 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 yesterday, 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 yesterday 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 US 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.
Details about Robinson’s life were just beginning to emerge yesterday.
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.
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