The Utah trade school student jailed on suspicion of fatally shooting right-wing 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, telling a press conference, “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 65km of Salt Lake City. 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.
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 420km southwest of the crime scene.
Police collected additional evidence on Friday evening from Robinson’s apartment in St George, about 8km from his parents’ home near the Arizona border.
Yellow crime scene tape was taken down after FBI and state forensic investigators finished their work, but officers remained outside the apartment yesterday.
Neighbours put up a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at the entrance to the complex, which has been swarmed by reporters.
Robinson 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.
The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk’s supporters and condemnation of political violence from across the ideological spectrum.
Allies of Kirk have taken to the internet in organised efforts to try to have anyone minimising or mocking his death fired from their jobs; Reuters has so far tallied 15 dismissals or suspensions tied to comments about the killing.
Cox called Kirk’s murder a “watershed in American history” and compared it to the rash of US political assassinations of the 1960s. He declined to discuss possible motives for the killing.
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