Suspect in Charlie Kirk murder captured

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 on Friday, 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. 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.

"It is an attack on all of us," Utah's governor said, drawing parallels between Kirk's murder and the assassinations of President John Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s.

"It is an attack on the American experiment," Cox said. "It is an attack on our ideals." The shooting has 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.