The man suspected of shooting Charlie Kirk was in a relationship with a transgender flatmate, the governor of Utah has said on Sunday.
The suspect, Tyler Robinson, 22, has not confessed to the murder of the influential conservative activist, but his flatmate is co-operating with investigators, Spencer Cox said.
Kirk was fatally wounded while speaking to 3,000 people at Utah Valley University on Wednesday. A bullet hit his neck moments after he was asked by a left-wing member of the crowd: “How many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?”
Robinson was described as a promising student who dropped out of Utah State University after less than a term
“Too many,” replied Kirk, who had been an outspoken critic of transgender rights and who declared on social media last month that it “should be legal to burn a rainbow or [Black Lives Matter] flag in public”.
The possible motives for the shooting have been the subject of fierce debate. Many people, including President Trump, have framed it as an act inspired by a “radical-left” worldview.
Others have compared cryptic messages on bullet casings found at the scene to phrases used by a young man who killed ten black people in a grocery store in Buffalo in 2022 and by a man who killed 51 people in two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, suggesting they could have been written by someone from the far right.
Cox, the state governor, has said the suspect had a “leftist” worldview. He told ABC News that Robinson came from a conservative family, “but his ideology was very different”.
• Tyler Robinson: what we know about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer
He said: “We do know that the room-mate is a boyfriend [of the suspect] who is transitioning from male to female. I will say that that person is very co-operative with authorities.”
He said the flatmate had no prior knowledge of the shooting and was shocked when they found out about it.
A memorial in Phoenix, Arizona, for Charlie Kirk
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Cox described the suspect as an extremely bright and promising student who dropped out of Utah State University after less than a term and moved back to southern Utah.
“Clearly there was a lot of gaming going on,” he said. Cox blamed “dark places” on the internet for his alleged radicalisation. “I can’t emphasise enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us. These companies, trillion-dollar market caps, have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage.”
• Camilla Long: Charlie Kirk is shot dead and our ugly world says he’s the problem
Cox said that after the shooting, Robinson had chatted with friends online who noted that the person wanted by police looked rather like him and joked that it was him.
The suspect wrote on Discord, a messaging platform, that his “doppelganger” was trying “to get me in trouble”, according to the New York Times.
Another member of the group suggested that they should turn him in, for the reward. “Only if I get a cut,” Robinson responded, according to the paper.
Robinson was said to have agreed with another user who quipped that he should avoid eating at a McDonald’s in the near future — an apparent reference to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of the murder of the chief executive of a health insurance company and was captured in a New Jersey branch of the fast food chain.
To suggestions that the president would send in the National Guard, Robinson is said to have replied: “In a red state??? nah CLEARLY the shooter was from California.”
The website Axios reported that Robinson’s flatmate was “aghast” at the slaying and immediately turned over all messages from the suspect.
An electrician who said he worked with the suspect at an electrical contracting company in 2023 told the New York Post that Robinson was rather quiet, among his mostly conservative co-workers. But the anonymous co-worker said that he did speak up during a discussion about guns. “Tyler said he had made a 450-yard shot,” he said. “He got excited about it, at least, as excited as he can get. He never really showed much emotion.”
Since the suspect himself was not co-operating, Cox said, evidence about his alleged motivations was coming from people around him, including his family. This, along with forensic evidence, would be presented in charging documents on Tuesday, he said.