Kirk’s killer blended in on Utah university campus, where a high-powered rifle is recovered

UTAH, USA: The sniper who assassinated Charlie Kirk is believed to have jumped off a roof and fled into a neighborhood after firing one shot and has not yet been identified, authorities said Thursday in disclosing that they recovered a high-powered rifle from the scene.
The shooter appeared to be of “college age” and is believed to have blended in on the university campus where Kirk was shot, police said as they continued to investigate the latest act of political violence to befall America.
“I can tell you this was a targeted event,” said Robert Bohls, the top FBI agent in Salt Lake City.
Kirk was killed with a gunshot from a distant rooftop at the Utah Valley University campus, where he was speaking on Wednesday, authorities said. Federal, state and local authorities were working what they called “multiple active crime scenes.” As the search stretched into a second day, they provided little information about the shooter’s identity, motive, location or evidence and were reviewing grainy security videos of a mysterious person in dark clothing.
“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said. “I want to be very clear this is a political assassination.”
Two people were detained Wednesday, but neither was determined to be connected to the shooting and both were released, public safety officials said.
The circumstances of the shooting drew renewed attention to an escalating threat of political violence in the United States that in the last several years has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation, but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive.
Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A shot rings out, and Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators gasp and scream before people start running away.
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, were set to visit with Kirk’s family on Thursday in Salt Lake City. According to a person familiar with Vance’s plans but not authorized to speak about them publicly, the Vances will visit Utah instead of attending an outdoor ceremony to commemorate Sept. 11 in New York.
Vance posted a remembrance on X chronicling their friendship, dating back to initial messages in 2017, through Vance’s Senate run and ultimately praying after hearing of the shooting. Kirk played a pivotal role in setting up the second Trump administration, Vance wrote.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance wrote. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
Kirk was taking questions about gun violence
Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by his nonprofit political youth organization, Arizona-based Turning Point USA, at the Sorensen Center courtyard on campus. Immediately before the shooting, he was taking questions from an audience member about gun violence.
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the person asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.
Then a shot rang out.
The shooter, who Cox pledged would be held accountable in a state with the death penalty, wore dark clothing and fired from a building roof some distance away.
Madison Lattin was watching only a few dozen feet from Kirk’s left when she heard the bullet hit him.
“Blood is falling and dripping down, and you’re just like so scared, not just for him but your own safety,” she said.
She said she saw people drop to the ground in an eerie silence pierced immediately by cries. She and others ran. Some fell and were trampled in the stampede.
When Lattin later learned that Kirk had died, she wept, she said, describing him as a role model who had showed her how to be determined and fight for the truth.
Trump calls Kirk a ‘martyr for truth’
About 3,000 people were in attendance, according to a statement from the Utah Department of Public Safety. The university police department had six officers working the event, along with Kirk’s own security detail, authorities said.
Trump announced Kirk’s death on social media and praised the 31-year-old co-founder and CEO of Turning Point as “Great, and even Legendary.” Later, he released a video in which he called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom.”
Utah Valley University said the campus was evacuated after the shooting and will be closed until Monday.
Meanwhile, armed officers walked around the neighborhood bordering the campus, knocking on doors and asking for any information residents might have on the shooting. Helicopters buzzed overhead.
Wednesday’s event, billed as the first stop on Kirk’s “The American Comeback Tour,” had generated a polarizing campus reaction. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”
Last week, Kirk posted on X images of news clips showing his visit was sparking controversy. He wrote, “What’s going on in Utah?”
Condemnation from across the political spectrum
The shooting drew swift bipartisan condemnation as Democratic officials joined Trump, who ordered flags lowered to half-staff and issued a presidential proclamation, and other Republican allies of Kirk in decrying the violence.
“The murder of Charlie Kirk breaks my heart. My deepest sympathies are with his wife, two young children, and friends,” said Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman who was wounded in a 2011 shooting in her Arizona district.
In a joint statement, the Young Democrats of Connecticut and the Connecticut Young Republicans called the shooting “unacceptable.”
“We reject all forms of political violence,” they said. “There is no place in our country for such acts regardless of political disagreements.”
The shooting appeared poised to become part of a spike of political violence that has touched a range of ideologies and representatives of both major political parties. The attacks include the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband at their house in June, the firebombing of a Colorado parade in June to demand Hamas release hostages and a fire set at the house of Pennsylvania’s governor, who is Jewish, in April. The most notorious of these events is the shooting of Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally last year.
Kirk confronted liberals
Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by Kirk, then 18, and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.
But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.
Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as an aide to Donald Trump Jr. during the general election campaign.
Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.

NAIROBI: Authorities in Tanzania faced mounting concern Tuesday over killings during crackdowns on protests surrounding last week’s election, with the largest opposition party alleging that security forces were secretly dumping bodies of hundreds killed in the violence.
Demonstrations spread across the East African country for several days after the Oct. 29 voting as mostly young people took to the streets to protest an election that foreign observers said failed to meet democratic standards because key opposition figures were barred.
Authorities declared a nationwide curfew and security forces cracked down on protests by firing live bullets and tear gas canisters.
The main opposition party, Chadema, has claimed that more than 1,000 people were killed and said Tuesday that security forces were trying to hide the scale of the deaths by secretly disposing of the bodies. The authorities have not responded to the claims.
“Tanzanians’ hearts are bleeding right now. This is a new thing for Tanzanians,” Brenda Rupia, Chadema’s director of communications, said by phone from the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner with more than 97 percent of the vote in a rare landslide victory for the region, but foreign observers said the turnout was low. It was her first election victory — she rose to the presidency automatically as vice president in 2021 after the sudden death of her predecessor, John Pombe Magufuli.
Hassan’s win has been criticized as not credible because her main rivals — Tundu Lissu of Chadema and Luhaga Mpina of ACT-Wazalendo — had been prevented from running. Lissu has been jailed for several months, facing treason allegations stemming from his call for electoral reforms. His deputy, John Heche, was also detained days before voting.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday condemned the violent crackdown on protesters in a statement that urged Tanzanian authorities to “end the use of excessive and lethal force against protests, and take steps to ensure accountability” by security forces.
The group said various people in Tanzania had cited point-blank shootings by security forces.
The UK, Norway and Canada have cited what they said were credible reports of a large number of fatalities. And the Catholic Church says people died in their “hundreds,” although it was also unable to verify or confirm the exact numbers.
Tanganyika Law Society President Boniface Mwabukusi told The Associated Press that more than 1,000 people died based on accounts his group received and that it was in the process of compiling a report to be shared with international legal organizations.
“The killings were pre-planned to target regions that are known to be politically active, those that are critics of the ruling party. Following people to their homes and killing them amounts to a massacre,” Mwabukusi said.
Rupia, the top Chadema spokesperson, said at least 400 deaths have been reported by its leaders in the Tunduma area of Mbeya region. Other regions also have reported hundreds of victims, she said.
Asked if all the victims were getting funerals, she said that the security forces “are holding dead bodies” and that the remains of victims were being secretly dumped by the security forces to hide the scale of the killings.
Another Chadema official, Deogratius Munishi, said the party would not enter into any political pact with the government until there are electoral and judicial reforms to ensure justice is served. “We want to see those who shot Tanzanians being held accountable,” he said.
Tito Magoti, an independent human rights lawyer based in Dar es Salaam, said Tanzania is “in such crisis” as people look for missing relatives and others come to terms with the number of the dead, which he said is far greater than the figure cited by Chadema.
He said he received a message Tuesday from a citizen near the town of Arusha who reported seeing two army trucks coming from a hospital mortuary loaded with dead bodies. One was full and the other was half-full, he said.
He said he suspected authorities would bury the victims in a forest as part of a cover-up, and added that: “I don’t know know much hospitals are going to be complicit.”
Hassan, Tanzania’s first female leader, was inaugurated on Monday. She acknowledged in her speech that there had been loss of life and urged security agencies to ensure a return to normalcy.
Authorities have warned people not to share photos and videos that may cause panic as the Internet slowly returns after a six-day shutdown. Mobile phone users received a text message on Monday night saying that sharing images that could cause panic or demean human life would lead to “treason charges.”
The messages came shortly after the Internet was reconnected, when people began sharing unverified images of bodies they claimed were victims of the election protests.
A social media page that had been uploading videos and photos of purported election protest victims was pulled down on Monday evening, after attracting thousands of followers within a day.
On Tuesday, life was slowly returning to normal in Dar es Salaam and the administrative capital, Dodoma, with gas stations and grocery shops reopening and public transport resuming after days of closure.
The government spokesperson on Monday asked all public workers to return to work, effectively ending a work-from-home order that had been announced after the curfew imposed on Wednesday.

Kirk’s killer blended in on Utah university campus, where a high-powered rifle is recovered