OREM, Utah – The authorities revealed granulated photos on Thursday of a man dressed in a black long -sleeved shirt, dark sunglasses and a baseball cap that they said it was “of interest” in the fatal shooting of the influential right -wing activist Charlie Kirk in a Utah College campus.
The man, captured in security chamber images by pressing his fists and walking along a ladder, seems to be wearing a shirt with an image of an American flag and an eagle.
“We are asking for public help to identify this person of interest in relation to Charlie Kirk's fatal shooting at Utah Valley University,” said the FBI in X.
No suspect was in custody on Thursday, more than 20 hours after the shooting. However, Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the FBI Salt Lake City office, said the researchers recovered the weapon that they believe was used to kill Kirk, a high -power bolt action rifle that they found in a wooded area near the campus, as well as the footprints and traces of the suspect.
“We are and continue working without stopping until we find the person who has committed this atrocious crime and we will discover why they did,” said Bohls.
A nearby ally of President Trump, who founded the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, Kirk was killed on Wednesday by a single shot shot from the roof of a nearby building while addressing a question about the mass shootings on a campus at the University of Utah Valley in Orem.
The researchers are tracking a suspect that seemed to be the university age and mixed on the campus, Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Public Security Department, told journalists on Thursday morning. They have traveled dozens of feeds of the security cameras of the campus and collected footwear impressions, a palm footprint and the forearm's footprints for analysis.
The video of the crowd captured by an assistant shows a solitary figure in black crossing the roof of the Losee Center, a building about 150 yards where Kirk was talking about.
Mason said the researchers “trust our skills to track” the shooter and had “good video images” that were not ready to launch.
“We are working through some technologies and some ways to identify this individual,” he said.
After analyzing the images of the security camera, the researchers believe that the shooter arrived at the campus around 11:52 am and moved along the stairs, to the roof, on the other side of the roof to the shot, Mason said.
“We were able to track their movements while moving to the other side of the building, jumped from the building and fled the campus and towards a neighborhood,” Mason said. “Our researchers worked through those neighborhoods, contacting anyone who can, with bell cameras, witnesses, and have worked through those communities trying to identify any leads.”
Bohls said the researchers recovered a high -power action rifle in a wooded area where the shooter had fled. A source of application of the law told the Times a Mauser 30-06 was recovered by researchers. The researchers have not said if the rifle had been tracked to an owner.
The UTAH Public Security Department said Wednesday night that its state crimes laboratory is working on “multiple scenes of active crimes,” from the site where Kirk was shot in the places he and the suspect traveled, with the Federal Investigation Office, the Utah County Prosecutor's Office, the UTAH County Sheriff's Office and Local Police departments.
The hope of a rapid capture of the suspect vanished on Wednesday night after the FBI released the man that its director, Kash Patel, had saying It was a research topic. After thanking the local and state authorities for stopping “the subject for the horrible shooting”, Patel announced that the man had been released after an interrogation by the police.
“Our research continues,” Patel said.
Another man who was arrested a few hours earlier was released after being reserved by the Police of the University of Utah Valley under suspicion of obstruction of justice.
Speaking in the Pentagon on Thursday in an event that commemorates the attacks of September 11, President Trump said he would posthumously grant the presidential medal for Freedom to Kirk.
“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of freedom and an inspiration for millions and millions of people,” Trump said.
It is believed that the shooter shot about 20 minutes after Kirk started talking on Wednesday in a patio covered in grass under a white canopy stamped with the slogan “show that I am wrong.” The event, which was attended by about 3,000 people, was the first stop on the American return tour of Kirk on American campuses.
Some experts who have seen videos believe that the assailant probably had experience with firearms, given the precision with which the unique shot was shot from a considerable distance.
Shared videos on social networks Show Kirk sitting in a chair, taking questions in front of a large multitude of people.
“Do you know how many mass shooters have been in the United States in the last 10 years?” A audience member asks.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responds.
Almost immediately, a shot sounds. Kirk turns, the blood sprouting his neck. Video shows people shouting and fleeing from the event.
The murder, the last incident in a series of violent attacks aimed at US politicians to the left and the right, led to the rapid condemnation of political violence on both sides of the ideological division. But he also led to a guilt game.
After President Trump celebrated Kirk as a “patriot who dedicated his life to the cause of open debate” and “martyr for truth and freedom,” he said in a Night video transmission From the Oval office that the rhetoric of “'Radical Left” was “directly responsible for terrorism that we are seeing in our country today.”
Trump, who did not mention recent acts of political violence against democratic legislators, requested an offensive against leftist groups.
Even when the House of Representatives observed a moment of silence for Kirk on Wednesday when I was still in critical condition, the floor He descended to chaos When some Democrats retreated to the request of a republican legislator that someone leads the group in prayer.
The Florida representative, Anna Paulina Luna, a former conservative and close friend of Kirk, told the Democrats angry. “All of you caused this,” she shouted.
Kirk, 31, was one of the most influential power runners of the Republican party.
The founder of the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Kirk had a vast reach online: 1.6 million followers in Rumble, 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 5.2 million followers in X and 7.3 million followers in Tiktok.
During the 2024 elections, he brought together his online followers to support Trump, which led the conservative presenter of Podcast Megyn Kelly to say: “It is not a euphemism to say that this man is responsible for helping Republicans recover the White House and the United States Senate.”
Just after Trump was chosen for the second time to the presidency in November, Kirk frequently published on social networks from the Trump Mar-Lago Finca in Florida, where he had a first-hand influence on which Maga Trump's loyals named his cabinet.
Kirk was known to merge his conservative policy, nationalism and evangelical faith, throwing the current political climate as a state of spiritual war between a fair right and the so -called liberals without God.
In an Awaken Church Salt Lake City campus event in 2023, he said that armed violence was worth the price of defending the right to endure weapons.
“I think it is worth having a cost of, unfortunately, some deaths from firearms every year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other rights given by God,” he said. “That is a prudent treatment. It's rational.”
Kirk also previously declared that God was on the side of the American conservatives and that “there was no separation from the Church and the State.” In a speech for Trump's supporters in Georgia last year, he said that “the Democratic Party supports everything God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle that happens around us.”
