Police in Utah have arrested 22-year-old Tyler Robinson in connection with Wednesday’s shooting death of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, according to a press conference held Friday by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Robinson allegedly confessed to a family member that he had been the shooter, and a family friend called the police before he was arrested in the early morning hours of Friday.
“Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident,” Cox said during the press conference.
Kirk’s death was captured from several angles and posted to social media platforms like X, TikTok, and Instagram. Many of the videos were very graphic and bloody, sparking a discussion about what kind of violence should be permitted on some of the internet’s largest platforms.
Many social media users ran wild with speculation about who may have been behind the killing, with several allies of Kirk insisting the person must have been trans or a far-left radical. But Robinson isn’t trans, and his exact politics are unclear at this point.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that markings on the bullet casings found at the scene were in some way “expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” citing a bulletin from the ATF. But the newspaper edited its article late Thursday to hedge on that claim, noting that experts urged caution in drawing conclusions from early internal reports.
What do the bullet casings actually say? Images of the casings haven’t been released, but Gov. Cox read out loud what he said were the messages at the press conference on Friday. The capitalization of each word is unknown.
Fired casing:
“Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”
Unfired casings:
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