US police and federal agents have said they had found the bolt-action rifle they believed was used to kill the influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a university appearance in Utah, but were still hunting the shooter.
The FBI released two photographs on Thursday afternoon of a “person of interest” in connection with the fatal shooting on Wednesday. FBI officials in the Salt Lake City office did not say the person was the suspected gunman.
The bureau has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of the assailant.
Mr 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.
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The killing, captured in graphic detail in videos that rapidly spread around the internet, occurred as Mr Kirk spoke onstage at an outdoor event called Prove Me Wrong in front of about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, about 65km (40 miles) south of Salt Lake City.
The killer arrived on campus a few minutes before the event began, and could be seen on security-camera video ascending stairwells to get on to a nearby roof before firing a single shot, according to the FBI and state officials.
The gunman jumped off the roof and fled into an adjoining neighbourhood, Robert Bohls, the FBI special agent in charge, told reporters. Investigators found a “high-powered, bolt-action” rifle in a nearby wooded area, and were examining that along with palm prints and footprints for clues.
The gunman appears to be of college age and “blended in well” on the campus, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason told reporters.
Mr Kirk, co-founder and president of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was pronounced dead at a local hospital hours later.
Mr Cox said Mr 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”.
The killing has prompted outrage from Democrats and Republicans over the latest act of political violence in the United States, with Donald Trump lamenting the loss of a key ally.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of United States better than Charlie,” the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.
[ Who was Charlie Kirk, the right-wing provocateur shot in Utah?Opens in new window ]
The president ordered flags to be lowered to half mast to honour Mr Kirk, who was prominent in Trump’s Make United States Great Again (Maga) movement.
Mr Trump, who survived an assassination attempt while campaigning in July 2024, also blamed the violence on the “radical left [who] have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis” in an evening video address. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country,” he said.
Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Mr Kirk speaking into a hand-held microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans The American Comeback and Prove Me Wrong.
A single shot rings out and Mr Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as a large volume of blood gushes from the left side of his neck.
Immediately before the shooting, Mr Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.
“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the person asked.
Mr Kirk responded: “Too many.”
Charlie Kirk: Assassination of conservative activist leaves America in turmoil
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in United States over the last 10 years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Mr Kirk asked.
Then a single shot rang out.
The assailant wore dark clothing and fired from a building roof some distance away to the courtyard where the event took place.
US vice-president JD Vance cancelled his trip to New York to commemorate the attacks by al Qaeda on September 11th, 2001, and instead decided to travel to Utah to visit Mr Kirk’s family, a person familiar with the situation said.
Mr 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 Mr Vance recalling that he was in multiple group chats with Mr Kirk.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organise and convene,” Mr 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.”
Former vice-president Kamala Harris said she was “deeply disturbed” by the shooting of Mr Kirk, who organised against her presidential campaign last year.
“I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence,” she wrote.
Congress’s top Republicans and Democrats joined in the condemning the attack.
The House oversight committee took a break from considering more than a dozen bills to change laws in Washington DC as part of Mr Trump’s militarised crackdown on crime in the district to hold a moment of silence in Mr Kirk’s honour.
Former Democratic president Barack Obama condemned political violence as “despicable” and said it had “no place in our democracy”.
“Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children,” he wrote.
Some conservatives echoed Mr Trump and were quick to blame liberals for the shooting.
“The Left is the party of murder,” said Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who threw the federal government into turmoil earlier this year as chair of Mr Trump’s department of government efficiency initiative.
– AP/Guardian/Reuters
