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.

TRACKING DOWN THE SUSPECT

Details about Robinson’s life were just beginning to emerge on Friday. At the time of the shooting he was living with his parents at his family’s home in Washington County, in the southwest corner of Utah near the Nevada border, Cox said, but the governor also referred to investigators interviewing a roommate of Robinson.

The suspect did not appear to have any criminal history, according to state records. He was a registered voter but was not affiliated with a political party, according to state voter records.

A family member interviewed by investigators said Robinson had become more political recently and spoke in a disparaging manner about Kirk, Cox said.

He was arrested for aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious injury and obstruction of justice, according to an affidavit filed by investigators. He has not been formally charged in court and is being held at the Utah County jail.

Investigators previously said they had found the bolt-action rifle believed to have been used to kill Kirk.

Investigators spoke to Robinson’s roommate, who showed them comments Robinson had made on Discord – a chat and streaming platform popular with gamers – where he discussed retrieving a rifle from a drop point and then ditching it in a bush wrapped in a towel. That matched the description of the gun recovered after the shooting in a wooded area near campus.

Ammunition found at the scene had been engraved with inscriptions, Cox said. The messages on the casings included: “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Ciao, ciao!”; “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao”; and “hey fascist! CATCH!” followed by arrow symbols that appeared to be a reference to a button-sequence for a videogame, according to the arrest affidavit.

The bullet that killed Kirk had also been inscribed: “Notices Buldge OWO what’s this?” an apparent reference to a jokey meme about online roleplay and gaming.

Politicians, commentators and amateur sleuths have filled social media and online forums with speculation and blame-casting about the killer’s identity and ideology. Cox told reporters he would leave interpretation of the messages on the ammunition to others for now.

CREDITED WITH HELPING TRUMP WIN ELECTION

Kirk, a well-connected activist, author and podcast host, was friends with Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s family and others at the highest echelons of the US government.

Patel, the FBI director, also offered a personal tribute at the press conference: “Rest now brother, we have the watch. I’ll see you in Valhalla,” he said in closing his remarks, referring to the heavenly reward for warriors in Norse mythology.

Kirk, co-founder and president of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, began his career in conservative and right-wing politics as a teenager.

Trump told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” program that Kirk’s ability to connect with young people and explain his policies had helped him win the 2024 election. “He had a big impact on the election,” the president said. “I got so many young voters. No Republican’s ever gotten anything close.”

Kirk appeared at Utah Valley on Wednesday as part of a planned 15-event “American Comeback Tour” of college campuses, having just returned to the US from an overseas speaking tour in South Korea and Japan.

Known for his often-provocative discourse on race, gender, immigration and gun regulation, Kirk would use such events to invite members of the crowd to debate him live, and was frequently challenged by both people on the left and the far right.

“We will never be able to solve all the other problems, including the violence problems that people are worried about if we can’t have a clash of ideas, safely and securely,” the governor said at Friday’s briefing. “That’s why this matters so much.”ity toward Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. On social media, they pointed to posts that appeared to celebrate Kirk’s death as evidence of conservatives increasingly being targeted.

The killing of Kirk has become a potent symbol for a segment of the American right that increasingly views the political left not merely as ideological opponents but as existential threats to conservative identity and power. Fuelled by years of rhetoric, amplified by social media echo chambers, this anger reflects a broader narrative in which Trump’s allies often portray themselves as besieged patriots facing a lawless and hostile opposition.

“They couldn’t beat him in a debate, so they assassinated him,” Isabella Maria DeLuca, a pardoned January 6 rioter and conservative activist, wrote on X.

A 22-year-old man, Tyler Robinson, was in custody on Friday for the shooting after a 33-hour manhunt. Utah Governor Spencer Cox said Robinson had recently become more political and had expressed disdain for Kirk, one of the right’s most influential figures whose social media posts often included inflammatory comments about Jewish, gay and Black people. Cox said an unfired cartridge recovered with the shooter’s gun was engraved with, “Hey, fascist! Catch!”

Jen Golbeck, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland who studies right-wing online activity, analyzed more than 3,000 posts on two websites – X and the pro-Trump forum Patriots.Win – in the 24 hours following the shooting. She found a volatile mix of grief, rage, and signs of growing radicalization. With the shooter’s identity and motive still unknown, Golbeck said Trump supporters were “grabbing on to a narrative that fits what they want.”

On Patriots.Win, calls for vengeance surged. “The entire Democrat party needs to fucking hang now!” one anonymous poster wrote. “This is the Reichstag Fire,” another said, referencing a 1933 arson attack that helped usher in Nazi rule in Germany. “It’s time to end democracy.” Reuters was unable to reach a representative of Patriots.Win for comment.

One anonymous user on X called Kirk’s death a breaking point, warning that the nation was “teetering between a political rupture and civil war.” “We’re past words,” the post read.

Amid the fury, some voices urged restraint. “Stop trying to stoke violence,” one Patriots.Win commenter wrote.

Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer and prominent Trump supporter, said in an interview Kirk’s ability to galvanize a new generation of conservatives posed “an existential threat to the future of leftist ideology and power.”

Kirk, 31, founder of Turning Point USA, was a prominent figure in the MAGA movement, known for his ability to mobilize young conservatives.

Before a suspect was taken into custody, Trump blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s murder and told reporters on Thursday that “we just have to beat the hell out of them.” Trump also said that Kirk “was an advocate of nonviolence – that’s the way I’d like to see people respond.” US Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, told reporters after the shooting on Wednesday that “Democrats own what happened today.”

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who decried the shooting as “horrific,” pushed back on criticism that Democrats needed to tone down their political rhetoric. “Oh, please. Why don’t you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he’s posted and every ugly word,” she told reporters.

Numerous Democratic leaders urged for calm and condemned Kirk’s murder. “Political violence is NEVER acceptable,” US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted on X. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the attack on Kirk “disgusting, vile and reprehensible,” and urged Americans to “reject political violence in EVERY form.”

“WE CANNOT BACK OFF”

On his War Room podcast, far-right commentator Steve Bannon called Kirk “the America First martyr,” claiming Kirk had been under constant threat from “evil people” on the left. “We cannot back off. We cannot flinch,” Bannon said.

Some chapters of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that played a leading role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, refrained from calls to arms but posted accusations on the Telegram messaging app that left-wing activists were mocking Kirk’s death. The Tennessee chapter of the Proud Boys shared a video montage of people laughing at Kirk’s death compiled from social media sites.

Stewart Rhodes, the pardoned founder of the Oath Keepers militia who was sentenced to 18 years for his role in the January 6 Capitol riot, urged Trump to declare martial law and mobilise veterans as militia leaders during an appearance on far-right host Alex Jones’ show.

Citing the killing of Kirk, rising crime, immigration issues and left-wing resistance to Trump’s agenda, Rhodes called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and label the political left as being in “open rebellion.” He claimed veterans such as himself are drafting a proposal to submit to Trump, outlining how they could organize and train civilians to defend their communities under emergency conditions. The 1807 law empowers a president to deploy the US military to enforce the law and suppress events like civil disorder.

Chaya Raichik, a right-wing influencer known for her Libs of TikTok account, posted screenshots of social media users who allegedly celebrated Kirk’s death. Ryan Nichols, a January 6 rioter pardoned by Trump, urged followers to identify and harass those individuals. “Tag them, their employers, and make it so uncomfortable for them to even leave their house,” he wrote on X. “This is the way!”

Nealin Parker, executive director of Common Ground USA, a nonprofit that seeks to reduce political violence and polarization, said she worried that radical voices on the fringes were stoking hate and fear, with potentially violent consequences.

“Right now people are willing to believe terrible things about the other side,” she said. “What’s happening online really matters.”