The manhunt for the shooter who killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk ended Friday with a suspect taken into custody, authorities said.
Utah’s Department of Public Safety and the FBI confirmed the arrest during a morning briefing, capping a two-day search that began after the 31-year-old podcaster and Turning Point USA cofounder was fatally shot at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday.
Authorities identified the suspect as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Washington, Utah, after receiving a tip from a friend of Robinson’s family. Officials said the tip came late Thursday night, prompting agents to move quickly to locate and arrest him. A $100,000 reward for information leading to the identification and arrest of the shooter was announced Thursday.
President Donald Trump first announced the arrest in a live interview on Fox News, claiming, “With a high degree of certainty, we have him.”
At a press briefing Friday, Utah governor Spencer Cox announced Robinson had been arrested in the early hours of September 12 after a family member reached out to a family friend, who contacted authorities. The friend told investigators that Robinson had hinted at his involvement in the shooting. The tip was relayed through local law enforcement to the FBI and Utah county investigators, who matched Robinson’s gray Dodge Challenger and clothing to campus surveillance footage from the day of the shooting. A family member also told investigators that Robinson spoke critically of Kirk.
Cox said Robinson’s roommate also cooperated, showing investigators Discord messages in which Robinson discussed retrieving and hiding a rifle, leaving it wrapped in a towel, monitoring the drop site, and engraving bullets.
FBI director Kash Patel outlined the bureau’s role in the investigation, stressing the speed of the response and coordination with Utah authorities. He said agents arrived on scene within 16 minutes of the shooting, secured the area alongside local police, and quickly began moving evidence to FBI labs in Quantico for analysis. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk and honor his memory,” he said.
Patel closed his remarks with a brief eulogy for Kirk, saying, “I’ll see you in Valhalla.”
Beyond the Discord account identified by Cox, Robinson appears to have had virtually no online footprint that could be immediately identified in public or private databases. Internet users produced images they claimed came from family photo albums posted online, but the accounts of his immediate family members were shut down quickly, and these images couldn’t be verified; none pointed to any obvious motive or ideology.
In a statement, Utah State University confirmed that Robinson briefly attended the school for one semester in 2021.
Investigators recovered a Mauser .30-caliber hunting rifle near the scene of the shooting, allegedly abandoned by the gunman as he fled into a wooded area. A spent round was found in the chamber, with three live cartridges in the magazine. Cox said Friday that the casings bore engraved inscriptions. They reportedly include memes to crude jokes, such as “if you read this, you are gay. LMAO.”
Authorities say the shooter fired from a rooftop overlooking a courtyard where Kirk was hosting one of his trademark “prove me wrong” campus debates. Widely shared footage online shows Kirk addressing a question on mass shootings when a bullet suddenly strikes him in the neck.
Roughly 3,000 people are estimated to have been in attendance. Millions more were confronted by gruesome footage of the incident online, in some cases autoplaying across major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X, where researchers say efforts to combat the spread of violent content have broadly declined.
The investigation unfolded at a moment when the FBI was already under fire. In recent weeks, the bureau has endured sweeping dismissals of senior and mid-level agents, moves alleged in a lawsuit this week to be politically motivated purges. The shake-ups are said to have sapped institutional knowledge and morale, signaling to agents that defying political directives could cost them their careers.
The days after the shooting were marked by confusion. Within hours, state and federal officials issued conflicting accounts of whether anyone had been detained. The FBI’s Patel briefly announced that a “subject” was in custody, only to later announce that the person had been released. Scrapped press conferences and uneven briefings fueled further uncertainty, with rampant speculation on TV news and social media rushing to fill the gaps in credible information.
Far-right influencers and extremist groups took to posting the personal details of people they accused of celebrating Kirk’s death, triggering harassment campaigns and death threats. Within hours of the shooting, a website began compiling names, social media handles, and employers of accused offenders.
That atmosphere grew even darker on Thursday, when the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, DC, was briefly locked down over a bomb threat, which Capitol Police later deemed not credible. More than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities received hoax threats that forced lockdowns and class cancellations across several campuses.
Patel defended the FBI’s investigation during Friday’s press conference, saying it took “less than 36 hours—33 hours, in fact” for authorities to arrest Robinson. “This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said.
FBI communications reviewed by WIRED show that agents had previously flagged Kirk’s events as potential flash points. In an April 2021 email, first obtained by the nonprofit Property of the People via public records request, a member of a Seattle-based FBI intelligence group is shown alerting other agents to Kirk’s appearances in Washington state. The events are listed among others flagged for having the potential to “lead to political violence.”
