Editor’s note: This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to remove quotes after the verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship.
A suspect has been arrested in southern Utah in connection with the fatal shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Spencer Cox said on Friday morning, identifying the man as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.
“We got him,” the Utah governor said at a press conference, adding that Robinson was arrested and taken into custody in Washington county, which is close to the state border with Arizona, on Thursday at 10pm local time.
Cox said a family friend of Robinson’s reached out to the authorities and said that Robinson “confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”.
Cox said Robinson was seen wearing clothing consistent with surveillance images and that investigators have also seen messages he sent via the group chat app Discord that linked him to the shooting.
Kirk was shot and killed with a single bullet fired from a distant rooftop while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem. Around 3,000 people had gathered to hear from the 31-year-old, a co-founder of the hard right youth organization Turning Point USA, or to debate him over his characteristic inflammatory public speech and often-extremist views on race, immigration, gender identity and gun rights.
Utah county attorney Jeff Gray plans to file formal charges against Robinson on Tuesday, according to his chief of staff. Gray’s office “is carefully reviewing all the evidence in this case to determine the appropriate charges to file”, the chief of staff said. If Robinson is charged on Thursday, the office said, his first court appearance would be a virtual hearing at 3pm MT that day. Gray is expected to announce the charges at a press conference at noon on Tuesday.
Cox said that family members told investigators that the suspect in the killing, Robinson, had “become more political in recent years” and mentioned that Kirk was coming to UVU at a prior family dinner.
“They talked about why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate,” Cox said.
A high-powered Mauser rifle found near the scene of the suspect’s initial escape route contained an unfired bullet that Cox said was marked with the message, “hey, fascist, catch!”.
Other casings appeared to reference gaming and online meme culture including “Oh Bella Ciao” – an Italian folk song that became an anti-fascist resistance anthem during the second world war and has been popularized in some video games – and a homophobic slur: “If you read this, you are gay LMAO [laughing my ass off].”
Cox said that Robinson’s roommate showed investigators Discord messages he sent which were “affiliated with the contact, Tyler, stating a need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point,” and referring to having left the rifle wrapped in a towel.
A spokesperson for Discord said in a statement they “identified a Discord account associated with the suspect, but have found no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord”.
“The messages referenced in recent reporting about planning details do not appear to be Discord messages,” the statement said. “These were communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting, where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere.”
They noted that Discord has removed the suspect’s account.
Cox said Robinson was not a student at UVU and a UVU spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that they had no record of him attending.
The spokesperson said Robinson is a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and that he briefly attended Utah State University (USU) for one semester in 2021. Robinson received concurrent enrollment credit through Utah Tech University from 2019 to 2021, while in high school, the spokesperson added.
In a statement, USU said: “We can confirm that Robinson did attend the Logan campus briefly for one semester in 2021, was a pre-engineering major, and took classes consistent with that major, after which he took a leave of absence.”
Kristin Schwiermann, 66, a neighbor of the Robinson family, told the Guardian that Robinson was “very respectful and quiet” and “had friends”. “He was smart,” she said, and “aced his ACTs and got a full ride at university”.
“He’s from a very loving family,” she said. “I love his mother, and he’s just a hard-working family.”
The news, she said, “shocked the crap out of me, because we live in a very nice neighborhood, a very quiet neighborhood, we all know each other”.
“I didn’t think he would have done this,” she said.
On Friday morning, the sunny, winding streets near the Robinson residence were crowded with law enforcement vehicles, marked and unmarked, and media cameras.
Melissa Tait, a 55-year-old woman and mother of four, who lives just down the street from the Robinson house, said that the Robinsons were “just like any other neighbor” and “no different than my family”.
Robinson is being held at the Utah county jail and, per court documents obtained by the Associated Press, he is expected to be charged with suspicion of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm, and obstruction of justice charges.
As charges are being brought by the state rather than the federal government, the trial is likely to be televised, a legal expert at Politico said. “Utah has one of the best cameras-in-the-courtroom rules in the country,” the media lawyer Jeff Hunt told the outlet. “There’s a presumption of electronic media coverage in our trial courts.”
Earlier on Friday, Donald Trump said he’d heard of an arrest just moments before going on air in a live TV studio interview with the Fox & Friends morning show.
“I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody,” the US president said. He also noted that he believes Kirk’s killer should receive the death penalty.
During the intense search for the shooter, investigators and the public had been poring over video officially released, showing the suspect running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the building and dropping to the ground.
The FBI offered up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person. On Wednesday, they detained but then released without charge two other persons “of interest”.
The death of Kirk – a close ally of Trump – has brought renewed attention to the escalating threat of political violence in the United States. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation from political leaders.
Cox told the public on Thursday “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online and encouraged people to ignore it.
On Thursday evening, Kirk’s casket had arrived in his home state of Arizona aboard Air Force Two, accompanied by JD Vance, who has lionized Kirk. The vice-president’s wife, Usha, stepped off the plane with Kirk’s widow, Erika.
Turning Point USA and Kirk’s family home are in Arizona.
Kirk was a provocateur and a divisive figure who is credited with helping bring young people, especially men, into the US president’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement. He was also known for bigoted views, calling for a total ban on transgender healthcare, describing immigration from Muslim countries as “civilizational suicide”, and peddling conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
