Utah officials show new video of suspect fleeing roof after shooting
At a news conference, Beau Mason, the head of Utah’s department of public safety, just showed surveillance video of the suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk running along the roof of the building from where the shot was fired, jumping down and crossing a street in the direction of a wooded area where officials said they found a rifle.
Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, appealed to the public to share any information about the suspect, but he added, “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.
“Our adversaries want violence,” Cox said. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams.”
Cox also pledged to find the killer and pursue the death penalty.
Key events
Summary
In case you’re just joining us, here’s a recap of the day’s events as US authorities continue their hunt for the gunman a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah.
US officials have appealed for help from the public for information to help find the shooter, releasing new videos and photos from the scene of the attack at a Utah university.
“We need as much help as we can possibly get,” Utah governor Spencer Cox told a news conference more than 24 hours after Kirk was shot while speaking in front of thousands of people. “We cannot do our job without the public’s help,” Cox said, appearing alongside FBI director Kash Patel – who didn’t speak – and other officials. The FBI had received more than 7,000 leads and tips so far, he said.
Surveillance video newly released by authorities showed a person wearing a hat, sunglasses and a long sleeve black shirt running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the building and dropping to the ground. The suspect is believed to have fled into the local neighbourhood after firing the one shot and has not yet been identified.
Investigators said they had obtained clues, including a palm print, a shoe impression and a high-powered hunting rifle found in a wooded area along the path the shooter fled. But they were yet to name a suspect or cite a motive in the killing. The FBI is offering up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person.
Donald Trump agreed with a suggestion from a conservative reporter that his supporters should not respond to Kirk’s death with violence, a day after the president blamed the “radical left” for the killing and pledged a wide-ranging response. Trump said Kirk – a close ally – had been “an advocate of nonviolence” and “that’s the way I’d like to see people respond”. He cited “big progress” in the investigation.
Cox pledged to pursue the death penalty once the killer was found, also saying there was “a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.
Kirk’s casket arrived in his home state of Arizona aboard Air Force Two, accompanied by vice-president JD Vance. Vance’s wife, Usha, stepped off the plane with Kirk’s widow, Erika. Vance helped carry Kirk’s casket with a group of uniformed service members as it was loaded on to the plane.
The Trump administration has threatened action against any foreigners in the US who praise or make light of Charlie Kirk’s death, Lucy Campbell has reported.
The move comes against the backdrop of an aggressive crackdown on free speech and dissenting views in the US under Trump’s second term, especially in relation to campus protests sparked by Israel’s war on Gaza.
The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said on X on Thursday that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country” and that he had directed consular officials to “undertake appropriate action” against those deemed to be “praising, rationalizing or making light of” Kirk’s death on social media.
Landau invited X users to bring such cases to his attention in the comments of his post, which he said would be monitored by consular officials.
A state department spokesperson said:
This administration does not believe that the United States should grant visas to persons whose presence in our country does not align with US national security interests.
The full story is here:
A Mauser .30-caliber, bolt-action rifle found in a towel in the woods is among the clues found by investigators in Charlie Kirk’s killing.
A spent cartridge was recovered from the chamber, and three other rounds were loaded in the magazine, according to information circulated among law enforcement and described to the Associated Press.
The weapon and ammunition were being analysed by law enforcement at a federal lab.
A news conference earlier today heard that the new video appearing to show the gunman dropping down from a roof, crossing a street and then moving into the wooded area was used by law enforcement to find the high-powered rifle.
The FBI reward of $100,000 and direct appeals to the public for information appear to signal law enforcement’s continued struggles to identify Charlie Kirk’s killer a day after the shooting, as our new full report details.
In appealing for information, Utah governor Spencer Cox said that “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.
“Our adversaries want violence,” he said. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instil disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams.”
Cox also vowed to find the killer of Kirk – a close ally of Donald Trump – and pursue the death penalty.
You can read the full report here:
The campus of Utah Valley University was mainly deserted and silent on Thursday, Reuters is reporting – a stark contrast with the scenes of panic and disbelief 24 hours earlier when Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking in front of about 3,000 young people.
“It’s eerie, tense, quiet,” said McKinley Shinkle, a 25-year-old electrical engineering student, when asked to describe how it felt on campus, which was ordered closed for the rest of the week.
McKinley Shinkle and his cousin Anthony Shinkle, a biology student, said they were walking towards the event when the shot was fired, and people began running towards them.
“People shouldn’t have to be afraid just to speak their mind,” Anthony Shinkle said.
What little activity there was on the campus – about 40 miles (65km) south of Salt Lake City in Orem, Utah – involved law enforcement investigators.
Yellow police tape restricted access to several locations, including a university building that the gunman was believed to have used as a perch to fire down at an amphitheater where Kirk was speaking – about 180 metres (200 yards) away.
Investigators scoured the building for forensic evidence on Thursday.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter has lamented the loss of “humanity over politics” in the US in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing
CNN reports that Patti Davis said that after then-president Reagan was shot the 1981, there was a “suspension of politics and rancor” as the US showed so much compassion towards her family.
But now there was a very different culture compared with then, she said, telling the network:
This country kind of folded itself around us and remembered how to be compassionate and remembered humanity over politics, and we don’t have that any more. And I’m sorry for Charlie Kirk’s family that they don’t have that, because it mattered.
Vice-president JD Vance has flown to Salt Lake City aboard Air Force Two to pick up Charlie Kirk’s casket and transport it to his home state of Arizona, where the 31-year-old lived and grew his conservative youth movement.
Kirk’s widow, Erika, and second lady Usha Vance were also on the plane.
Vance helped carry Kirk’s casket with uniformed service members on the tarmac when it was loaded on to the aircraft, as we reported earlier.
Vance has said on social media that Kirk advocated for him to become Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, and when he did, “Charlie was there for me … constantly calling and texting, checking on our family and offering guidance and prayers”.
So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene. He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.
An official has also pointed to the shooting suspect wearing a “very distinctive T-shirt” showing a US flag with what appears to be an eagle on it, a baseball cap with a triangle on it, and sunglasses.
Beau Mason, Utah’s department of public safety chief, told the news conference:
All distinctive, all things that we would ask the public to look for and try to identify if they know someone who has those items, who has been seen wearing those items. We’re looking for all that information.
In appealing for public assistance, Utah governor Spencer Cox said that “we cannot do our job without the public’s help right now”.
He told the news conference that people had given more than 7,000 leads and tips.
The FBI hasn’t received this many digital media tips from the public since the Boston marathon bombing.
Cox said 20 state, federal and local law enforcement partners were working closely together to find Charlie Kirk’s killer.
We need as many, as much help as we can possibly get. Any videos or photos that you might have … should be submitted to our digital media tip line.
Returning now to the news conference, the head of Utah’s department of public safety said in describing the new footage of the suspect that he had left hand and shoe imprints as well as showing what sneakers he was wearing.
Beau Mason said the surveillance video showed the suspect running on a rooftop and dropping down to the grass area on the ground, and “as he did that he left some palm impressions”.
There’s some smudges, some places we’re looking to collect DNA, there’s a shoe imprint, where we believe the suspect is clearly identified as wearing Converse tennis shoes.
Mason also noted the suspect’s clothing and “there appears to be some white on the soles of those Converse tennis shoes – those are all identifiable items that we’re looking for”.
Phoenix sports broadcaster fires basketball reporter for criticism of Charlie Kirk
A Phoenix, Arizona broadcaster, PHNX Sports, fired a reporter who covers the Phoenix Suns basketball team on Thursday for viral social media comments he made about the conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk after his death.
The reporter, Gerald Bourguet, wrote on X on Wednesday night:
“Political differences” are not the same thing as spewing hateful rhetoric on a daily basis, and refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence. Just so we’re 100% clear on that.
“He was a father” Half of y’all didn’t give a DAMN about doing anything to stop gun violence when the victims of mass shootings were LITERAL children. And those kids weren’t bigots spreading genocidal propaganda, or a mindset he directly fed into …
If you’re saddened by today’s “political violence,” horrified by the video, or repulsed by my response, ask yourself why your reaction was different when it came to school shootings, mass deportations or the HUNDREDS of videos of horrific murders in Gaza (which Kirk cheered on)
Truly don’t care if you think it’s insensitive or poor timing to decline to respect an evil man who died. Too many of you are more concerned with being polite and *appearing* to be good people rather than showing some damn backbone and standing on principal to condemn hate
Utah officials show new video of suspect fleeing roof after shooting
At a news conference, Beau Mason, the head of Utah’s department of public safety, just showed surveillance video of the suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk running along the roof of the building from where the shot was fired, jumping down and crossing a street in the direction of a wooded area where officials said they found a rifle.
Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, appealed to the public to share any information about the suspect, but he added, “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.
“Our adversaries want violence,” Cox said. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instill disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams.”
Cox also pledged to find the killer and pursue the death penalty.
Charlie Kirk’s body returned to Phoenix, near megachurch where he hosted Trump in 2020
Charlie Kirk’s body has been transferred from Air Force Two to Hansen Mortuary chapel in Phoenix, Arizona, where the motorcade from the airport was followed by local news helicopters.
Donald Trump told reporters earlier that he had heard that the funeral would take place this weekend, and that he expects to attend.
If the funeral is held at the Phoenix megachurch where Kirk worshipped and held political rallies, Dream City Church, the location will be familiar to Trump.
In the summer of 2020, as he attempted to resume his large-scale political rallies despite the pandemic, Trump addressed at a packed indoor rally thousands of young supporters from Kirk’s conservative student group, Turning Point USA, at Dream City.
It was in that setting that the president electrified the crowd by making a racist joke about the virus that had brought global life to a standstill, calling Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China, the “Kung flu”. His use of the racist term was met with cheers and frenzied applause.
Among the attendees at the rally that day was Jacob Chansley, the self-described QAnon Shaman who would later take part in the storming of the Capitol.
Utah officials hold media briefing on Charlie Kirk shooting – watch live
Republican lawmaker supports call for statue of Charlie Kirk in the Capitol, equating him to Martin Luther King Jr
Representative Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, said on Thursday that he supports his colleague Anna Paulina Luna’s call for a statue of Charlie Kirk to be placed in the US Capitol, since, he told a reporter, “we have a statue of MLK in the Capitol, don’t we?”
The Capitol does not, in fact, have a statue of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, but it does have a bust.
Luna, a Florida Republican who got her start in politics working for Kirk’s student group, Turning Point USA, called for a statue to Kirk to be placed in the Capitol in a letter to House speaker Mike Johnson she circulated in draft form on Thursday.
In the letter, Luna repeated the inflammatory false claim that political violence and heated rhetoric only comes from the left, failing to account for recent examples of rightwing violence, like the attack on the CDC campus by an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who fired more than 500 rounds and killed a police officer, or the murder of Minnesota’s former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June by a gunman with a hitlist of 45 Democrats.
“Hateful rhetoric from the Left has created a toxic environment where one side finds it acceptable to stoke fear and violence to silence civil dissent”, Luna wrote. “We must be clear: They are the hate they claim to fight. Their words caused this. Their gate caused this.”
Clyde is the lawmaker who claimed, during a 2021 hearing on the January 6 riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters who tried to smash their way into the House chamber, that, “if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
Clyde was correct that video showed many of the rioters did stream through Statuary Hall in the Capitol stayed within the red velvet ropes set up for tourists, but he failed to account for what they did next: push through police lines in the next room to the main door to the House and try to break it down.
Cyde’s remark equating Kirk to King might not have pleased the conservative activist and influencer. In 2023, Kirk offered this appraisal of the civil right leader to students and teachers at America Fest, a Turning Point USA event: “MLK was awful.”
“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it,” Kirk added. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
As the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer goes on, Trump visits Yankee Stadium on 9/11 anniversary
As his vice-president, JD Vance, escorted Charlie Kirk’s casket from Utah to Arizona on Thursday, before a weekend funeral the president said he plans to attend, Donald Trump attended a baseball game at Yankee Stadium in New York to mark the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks.
Video from Fox showed that Trump engaged in some locker room talk with the players before the game, reminding them that he had been good friends with George Steinbrenner, the late owner of the team who was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions in 1972 to one of Trump’s Republican predecessors, Richard Nixon, and then pardoned by another, Ronald Reagan, as he left office in 1989.
The Fox feed then showed that Trump appeared in the Steinbrenner family box before the game, chatting with Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host who was forced to leave the president’s favorite network after allegations of sexual harassment that reportedly cost his employer $13m to settle.
Social media video showed that Trump was greeted with both cheers and boos from the crowd.
One night earlier, the Yankees held a moment of silence for Kirk, with his image on the big screen in centerfield.
Four new images of suspect released in Charlie Kirk shooting
The Utah department of public safety just posted online four new images of the person of interest wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of the far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
The images, which appear to be taken from surveillance video, give a clear view of the person’s large, black backpack, blue Converse sneakers and blue cap.
The images also appear to confirm that the person was wearing a black T-shirt with long sleeves that was given to donors to a veterans charity, the Disabled Veterans National Foundation.
The social media post includes a link to a digital tip line set up by the FBI field office in Salt Lake City.
Search update: no suspect in custody, officials say, but FBI is studying rifle and palm print
Police and the FBI confirmed that “no suspect is in custody”, in an update on the investigation into the killing of Charlie Kirk, the rightwing political activist and commentator, sent to reporters on Thursday evening by Utah’s department of public safety.
The statement added that experts from the FBI were analyzing a “high-powered bolt-action rifle” that “was recovered in a wooded area where the shooter had fled.
The officials also acknowledged that “photos of a weapon and various details about that firearm and ammunition, including inscriptions and symbols” are circulating online, but refused to confirm the authenticity of any of those photos.
The statement did, however, appear to indirectly confirm that the weapon had inscriptions of some kind since it added that “we are not able to provide further details on the content of those inscriptions”.
“Investigators have collected a footwear impression, a palm print, and forearm imprints,” the statement said.
