Conservative activist Charlie Kirk, co-founder of the youth organisation Turning Point USA and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, was assassinated on Wednesday in a targeted shooting at Utah Valley University.
Kirk was addressing a large audience when a single gunshot rang out. Video footage from the event showed him slumping in his chair as panic spread across the hall. Investigators later confirmed that the fatal bullet was fired from a campus rooftop by a person dressed in black, in what they believe was a planned attack. The shooter remains at large, with the Utah Department of Public Safety confirming no arrests have yet been made.
The assassination sent shockwaves through conservative circles in the United States. Kirk, 31, was best known for building Turning Point USA into a leading platform for right-wing student activism and for mobilising young voters in support of Donald Trump.
US President Trump described Kirk as a “martyr for truth” and called the assassination “a heinous and dark moment for America.”
“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said. “Today, because of this heinous act, Charlie’s voice has become bigger and grander than ever before, and it’s not even close. May God bless his memory. May God watch over his family.”
The President accused what he termed the “radical left” of fuelling political violence in the United States. “From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others — radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives,” he said.
Trump pledged a federal crackdown on political violence, vowing to hold accountable not only individuals but also groups and organisations that he claimed “fund and support” such attacks. “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country,” he declared.
Trump urged Americans to recommit to the values of “free speech, citizenship, and the rule of law”, principles he said Kirk had embodied in life and in death.
