Police, FBI hunt sniper who killed Charlie Kirk in Utah

Police and US federal agents mounted an intense manhunt on Thursday for the sniper who killed the influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk as he was fielding questions about gun violence during a university appearance in Utah.

Kirk, a 31-year-old podcast-radio commentator and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, is credited with helping build the Republican Party's support among younger voters. He was killed on Wednesday by a single gunshot in what Utah Governor Spencer Cox called a political assassination.

The killing, captured in graphic detail in videos that rapidly spread around the internet, occurred during a midday event attended by 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City.

In one clip, blood could be seen gushing from Kirk's neck immediately after a shot rang out, and he slumped in his chair.

Kirk, co-founder and president of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was pronounced dead at a local hospital hours later. His killing stirred immediate expressions of outrage and denunciations of political violence from Democrats, Republicans and foreign governments.

Cox said Kirk's events on college campuses were part of a tradition of open political debate that was "foundational to the formation of our country, to our most basic constitutional rights".

"When someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened," Cox said.

Vice President JD Vance canceled his trip to New York to commemorate the attacks by al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and instead will travel to Utah to visit Kirk's family, a person familiar with the situation said.

Kirk began his career in conservative politics as a teenager. A little more than a decade later, some of the friends he made along the way are now at the highest levels of US government and media, with Vance recalling that he was in multiple group chats with Kirk.

"So much of the success we've had in this administration traces directly to Charlie's ability to organize and convene," Vance wrote in a lengthy tribute posted on social media. "He didn't just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government."

Era of political violence

The shooting punctuated the most sustained period of US political violence since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump himself has survived two attempts on his life, one that left him with a grazed ear during a campaign event in July 2024 and another two months later foiled by federal agents.

The lone perpetrator suspected of firing the single gunshot that struck Kirk in the neck, apparently from a rooftop sniper's position on campus, remained "at large," said Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, at a news conference four hours after the shooting.

Security camera footage showed a person believed to be the assailant dressed in all-dark clothing, Mason told reporters.

State police issued a statement on Wednesday night saying that two men had been detained, and one was interrogated by law enforcement, but both were released, and the manhunt continued.

No suspects in custody, multiple ‘crime scenes’

One of the two detainees, an older man seen in photos that circulated online shortly after the killing, was familiar to locals as a political "gadfly," according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Officials said he had been charged with obstruction by university police and released.

Kirk, who was married and the father of two young children, had just returned to the US from an overseas speaking tour in South Korea and Japan.

His appearance on Wednesday was part of a planned 15-event "American Comeback Tour" of US college campuses.

Known for his often-provocative discourse on race, gender, immigration and gun regulation, Kirk often used such events to invite members of the crowd to debate him live.

"He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions," Vance wrote in his tribute. "If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he'd encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak."

At the moment he was shot, Kirk, a staunch advocate of the US Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms, was being questioned by an audience member about gun violence, according to multiple videos of the event posted online.

In a video message taped in the Oval Office, Trump vowed that his administration would track down those responsible for Kirk's killing.

Trump, who routinely describes political rivals, judges and others who stand in his way as "radical left lunatics" and warns that they pose an existential threat to the nation, also decried violent political rhetoric, while casting it as a phenomenon of the political left.

"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals," Trump said in the video. "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."