Manhunt Underway After Charlie Kirk, Charismatic Right-Wing Activist, Is Fatally Shot

 

Yan Zhuang Michael Levenson and Robert Draper

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-news

 

Here’s the latest.

An intense manhunt was underway Thursday for the person who killed Charlie Kirk, the charismatic founder of the nation’s pre-eminent right-wing youth activist group, in a brazen attack on a Utah college campus.

 

No suspects were in custody early Thursday, more than 12 hours after Mr. Kirk, a close ally of President Trump and the founder of a prominent conservative youth activist group, was shot while speaking to students at Utah Valley University. The F.B.I. released the man its director had said was a subject of the investigation.

 

Officials called the shooting a political assassination, and President Trump said that rhetoric from the “radical left” had contributed to it.

 

Some video evidence indicated that the shooter fired from a rooftop down into the courtyard where Mr. Kirk was speaking. Videos recorded before and after the shooting show a person on the roof of a building more than 100 yards from where Mr. Kirk stood.

 

Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, had stoked expectations of a fast end to the search on Wednesday when he congratulated officials for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting today.” Then he backtracked, saying on social media that the person had been released and the investigation would continue. Another person who was detained immediately after the attack was also determined not to be the shooter.

 

Mr. Kirk’s killing, the latest in a string of attacks targeting American political figures on the left and the right, intensified fears that political violence is becoming normalized in an increasingly polarized nation. On the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon, a request for a moment of silence for Mr. Kirk gave way to bitter partisanship.

 

Here’s what else to know:

 

The shooting: Mr. Kirk, 31, was shot about 20 minutes after he began speaking to a crowd of about 3,000 people at the university in Orem, Utah.

 

Key stances: Mr. Kirk promoted many controversial beliefs, including that the benefits of gun rights outweighed the costs and that immigrants would soon displace white Americans.

 

Pressure on Patel: The F.B.I. director’s backtrack was a source of significant embarrassment for him on a day when three former F.B.I. agents filed a lawsuit portraying him as a partisan neophyte more interested in social media, and swag, than in day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency.

 

Social media: The reaction to the shooting on social media platforms fell into well-worn patterns: prayers for the victim, condemnation of political violence and sharply partisan takes. There was also debate over the appropriateness of posting raw footage of the violence.

 

Misidentification: A Canadian man was falsely accused of being the shooter in thousands of social media posts, apparently because he resembled a man who was briefly detained by police. The rumor appeared to have originated from a social media account that impersonated a Fox News affiliate.