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(NewsNation) — Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative influencer and key ally to President Donald Trump, was assassinated Wednesday while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University.
Police said Kirk, 31, was struck by a single rifle round fired from a rooftop roughly 200 yards away, sending thousands of attendees scrambling for cover.
Charlie Kirk asked about shootings before shots fired
Emma Pitts, a reporter for the Deseret News who was in attendance to cover the event, spoke to NewsNation about witnessing the shooting.
“It was a terrible irony that Kirk was asked about mass shootings just before I heard a gunshot from behind me at 12:20 p.m. The first question was if Kirk knew how many mass shooters were transgender. The student who asked the question was challenging Kirk, who picked up a microphone on the desk in front of him and said, ‘Too many,'” Pitts recounted.
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Pitts said that as Kirk was about to answer a second question about the number of mass shootings in the United States, “a bullet appeared to strike him in the neck.”
“I’ll never get the image out of my head. It looked like a fountain of blood came out of his neck. His body went limp and then his eyes closed,” she recalled.
A mathematics professor at UVU told NewsNation affiliate KTVX, “When I saw students running off from the campus over the bridge, a lot of them were crying. It was traumatizing for everyone.”
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University ‘failed’ to protect Charlie Kirk: Witness
Pitts said the crowd was “full of energy for his appearance.” She noted that campus security for Kirk’s event seemed lax and “nobody scanned our equipment, nobody scanned our bags, there was no security like that.”
“Anyone could just walk in. It was probably the worst place on campus, because there’s so many areas where anyone can just walk in,” another witness told KTVX. “I would say the security level. I would say UVU kind of failed him in a way,”
Pitts said she “didn’t feel there was a high security presence, which surprised me because Kirk was controversial.”
After passing through security, Pitts said she was seated five rows from Kirk onstage.
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Charlie Kirk‘s death announced by Trump
President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death later that afternoon.
“The great, and even legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!” Trump wrote on social media.
Search underway for Charlie Kirk’s killer
Law enforcement continued to search for Kirk’s shooter Thursday. Robert Bohls, special agent in charge of the FBI in Salt Lake City, said, “I can tell you this was a targeted event” and that the shooter appeared to be of college age.
Additionally, authorities have recovered a firearm suspected to be used in the shooting, and have tracked the suspect’s path on campus to a nearby roof and the “shooting location.”
Two people initially detained by police were released Wednesday.
