Charlie Kirk suspect sent disturbing messages to friends after assassination

Polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Char­lie Kirk was fatal­ly shot on Sep­tem­ber 10 while answer­ing ques­tions at Utah Val­ley Uni­ver­si­ty. A rifle round struck him in the neck from a near­by rooftop, caus­ing pan­ic among approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 atten­dees. Kirk, known for his con­ser­v­a­tive activism, died 90 min­utes lat­er in the hos­pi­tal. The shock­ing inci­dent drew nation­al atten­tion and launched a swift, high-pro­file man­hunt.

Author­i­ties traced the shooter’s route across rooftops and through a wood­ed area where a rifle was even­tu­al­ly recov­ered. Pub­li­cized images and a $100,000 reward helped gen­er­ate leads, but a break­through came when Tyler Robinson’s father rec­og­nized him from the released footage. Despite fear­ing the death penal­ty for his son, the father con­vinced Robin­son to sur­ren­der, lead­ing to his arrest at age 22.

“Hey guys, I have bad news for you all,” read a mes­sage from an account that alleged­ly belonged to Robin­son, accord­ing to the spokesper­son and a law enforce­ment source. “It was me at UVU yes­ter­day. im sor­ry for all of this.” 

“What­ev­er you do don’t go to a mcdon­alds any­time soon,” the friend wrote, accord­ing to the law enforce­ment sources.

The account appear­ing to belong to Robin­son respond­ed: “Bet­ter also get rid of this man­i­festo and exact copy rifle I have lying around.”

One mes­sage read, “im sur­ren­der­ing through a sher­iff friend in a few moments, thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amaz­ing, thank you all for every­thing.”

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, Utah Gov­er­nor Spencer Cox cit­ed Dis­cord mes­sages that alleged­ly linked Robin­son to the plan­ning of the attack. Inves­ti­ga­tors reviewed screen­shots from a roommate’s phone show­ing dis­cus­sions about retriev­ing a rifle from a drop point, leav­ing it wrapped in a tow­el, and watch­ing the loca­tion where it was hid­den. The room­mate claimed these mes­sages were based on a note left by Robin­son and shared them vol­un­tar­i­ly with author­i­ties.

Addi­tion­al Dis­cord exchanges have sur­faced show­ing Robin­son jok­ing with friends after the FBI released a sus­pect pho­to. He alleged­ly dis­missed the image as his “dop­pel­ganger” and made sar­cas­tic remarks about get­ting rid of a “man­i­festo” and a match­ing rifle. He also mocked claims of polit­i­cal­ly charged inscrip­tions on ammu­ni­tion and made flip­pant ref­er­ences to his iden­ti­ty being tied to Cal­i­for­nia.

Robin­son faces charges includ­ing aggra­vat­ed mur­der and obstruc­tion of jus­tice. Foren­sic analy­sis of the recov­ered rifle and oth­er evi­dence is ongo­ing. Offi­cials also con­firmed Robin­son was roman­ti­cal­ly involved with a tran­si­tion­ing room­mate, who has been coop­er­at­ing with the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Author­i­ties con­tin­ue to assess motive, dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and foren­sic evi­dence. While the inves­ti­ga­tion remains active, Robin­son is refus­ing to coop­er­ate, leav­ing many key ques­tions unan­swered for now.