Utah Governor Spencer Cox said Friday that while he was grateful authorities had quickly identified and arrested a suspect in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, he had prayed that the killer would not turn out to be from Utah.
"For 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn't be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country," Cox said during a press conference in which he announced that Tyler Robinson had been taken into custody for Charlie Kirk's assassination. "Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for — just because I thought it would make it easier on us, if we could just say, 'Hey, we don't do that here.' But it did happen here, and it was one of us."
The Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, just said, "For the last 33 hours, I had been praying that this person (who murdered Charlie Kirk) was from another country. That he was not one of us because we are not like that. But it was one of us."
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) September 12, 2025
Weird. pic.twitter.com/7zeNFpykyB
Authorities confirmed the arrest of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, who was taken into custody in connection with Kirk's killing at Utah Valley University earlier in the week.
The governor described Kirk's murder as an attack not just on an individual but on democratic principles. "It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are," Cox said. He added that political violence must not be met with more violence: "At some point we have to find an off-ramp, or it's going to get much, much worse."
Cox said he had been "as angry as I have ever been" following the shooting but drew on Kirk's own words about forgiveness in addressing Utah's younger generation. He urged them to build "a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now."
Before Friday's press conference, Cox had called the shooting a "political assassination" and pleaded for restraint, as USA Today points out. "If anyone celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere," he said.
Despite his grief, Cox reiterated his belief in the country's resilience. "I still believe there is more good among us than evil, and I still believe that we can change the course of history," he said.
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