PROVO, Utah — Authorities said Thursday they have fresh leads in their massive manhunt for a college-age shooter who killed Charlie Kirk, the influential right-wing activist who founded the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, with a single bullet as he spoke at a Utah college campus.
Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City office, said that investigators recovered the weapon they believe was used to kill Kirk — a high-powered bolt-action rifle they found in a wooded area near the campus — as well as the suspect’s footprints and palm prints.
Kirk, a close ally of President Trump, was killed Wednesday by a single shot fired from the rooftop of a nearby building as he addressed a question about mass shootings at a Utah Valley University campus in Orem.
No suspects were in custody Thursday, more than 18 hours after the shooting.
But Bohls said Thursday investigators were tracking a suspect who appeared to be college age and blended in on the university campus. Investigators have collected footwear impression, a palm print and forearm imprints for analysis, he said, and “are confident in our abilities to track that individual.”
Video of the crowd captured by an attendee shows a lone figure in black dash across the rooftop of the Losee Center, a building about 150 yards from where Kirk was speaking.
After scouring dozens of feeds from campus security footage, investigators believe the shooter arrived on campus at about 11:52 am and moved through the stairwells, up to the roof, across the roof to the shooting location, Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, said at a Thursday morning news conference.
“We were able to track his movements as he moved to the other side of the building, jumped off of the building and fled off of the campus and into a neighborhood,” Mason said. “Our investigators worked through those neighborhoods, contacting anybody they can, with doorbell cameras, witnesses, and have thoroughly works through those communities trying to identify any leads.”
Bolts said investigators recovered what they believe the weapon used in the shooting: a high-powered bolt action rifle in a wooded area where the shooter had fled. Bohls did not answer reporters’ questions whether the rifle had been traced to an owner.
The Utah Department of Public Safety said Wednesday night its State Crime Lab is working “multiple active crime scenes” — from the site where Kirk was shot to the locations he and the suspect traveled — with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Utah County Attorney’s office, the Utah County Sheriff’s office, and the local police departments.
Hope for a speedy capture of the suspect faded Wednesday night after the F.B.I. released the man its director, Kash Patel, had said was a subject of the investigation. After thanking local and state authorities for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting,” Patel announced that the man had been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.
“Our investigation continues,” Patel said.
Mason said the man did not match the identity of the shooting suspect. He was later released after being booked by Utah Valley University police on suspicion of obstruction of justice.
A few hours later, police took a second suspect into custody and released him after interrogation, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
The shooter is believed to have fired about 20 minutes after Kirk began speaking Wednesday on a grassy campus courtyard under a white canopy emblazoned with the slogan “PROVE ME WRONG.” The event, attended by about 3,000 people, was the first stop on Kirk’s American Comeback Tour of U.S. campuses.
Some experts who have seen videos believe that the assailant probably had experience with firearms, given the precision with which the single shot was fired from a considerable distance.
Videos shared on social media show Kirk sitting on a chair, taking questions in front of a large crowd of people.
“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” an audience member asks.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responds.
Almost immediately, a short rings out. Kirk falls back, blood gushing his neck. Video show people screaming and fleeing from the event.
The killing — the latest incident in a spate of violent attacks targeting American politicians on the left and the right — led to swift condemnation of political violence from both sides of the ideological divide. But it also led to a blame game.
After President Trump celebrated Kirk as a “patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate” and “martyr for truth and freedom,” he said in an evening video broadcast from the Oval Office that “‘radical left” rhetoric was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
Trump — who did not mention recent acts of political violence against Democratic lawmakers — called for a crackdown on leftwing groups.
Even as the House of Representatives observed a moment of silence for Kirk Wednesday when he was still in critical condition, the floor descended into chaos when some Democrats pushed back on a Republican legislator’s request that someone lead the group in prayer.
Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a former conservative influencer and close friend of Kirk, pointed angrily at Democrats. “You all caused this,” she shouted.
Kirk, 31, was one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers.
The founder of the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Kirk had a vast online reach: 1.6 million followers on Rumble, 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 5.2 million followers on X and 7.3 million followers on TikTok.
During the 2024 election, he rallied his online followers to support Trump, prompting conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly to say: “It’s not an understatement to say that this man is responsible for helping the Republicans win back the White House and the U.S. Senate.”
Just after Trump was elected for a second time to the presidency in November, Kirk frequently posted to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he had firsthand influence over which MAGA loyalists Trump named to his Cabinet.
Kirk was known for melding his conservative politics, nationalism and evangelical faith, casting the current political climate as a state of spiritual warfare between a righteous right wing and so-called godless liberals.
At a Turning Point event on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church in 2023, he said that gun violence was worth the price of upholding the right to bear arms.
“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
He also previously declared that God was on the side of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” In a speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last year, he said that “the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle happening all around us.”
