“It shakes up a community because you don’t expect it,” said Addi Jacobson, 20, who recently moved into her grandmother’s house in the neighbourhood.
Ms Jacobson said she did not personally know the Robinson family, but her grandmother did.
“She just was saying that she thinks that, from what she’s seen and what she knows, they’re a great family, just regular citizens,” Ms Jacobson said. “She used the words, ‘very patriotic people.'”
“We knew their family. Our whole neighbourhood is so close,” said another neighbour who lived around the corner. She asked the BBC not use her name due to the heated political and online conversation around Kirk’s murder.
She recalled Tyler Robinson “was a pretty quiet kid,” though his younger brothers were more involved in community and sports. She called his mother, Amber Robinson, “an amazing parent,” and his father, Matthew Robinson, “a hard worker”. Both occasionally attended a nearby Mormon church, she said.
“That just even goes to show you can be an amazing parent, and your kids still just chooses what they choose,” said the neighbour.
“This is a good family,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox told CNN on Saturday. “A normal childhood. All of those things that, that you would hope would never lead to something like this. And sadly, it did.”
On 10 September, Kirk was shot in front of hundreds of students and observers, and was later pronounced dead at the hospital. Videos of the carnage spread across social media, and President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, and leaders of both major US political parties condemned the assassination.
“If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country,” the activist’s wife, Erika Kirk, said in her first public statement on Saturday.
Officials initially held two suspects but later let them go. On Friday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox announced Mr Robinson was in custody. His father had persuaded him to surrender, officials said.