![\"Charlie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/charlie-kirk-shot.jpg\")
Charlie Kirk speaks during a town hall meeting on March 17 in Wisconsin. The suspect in his killing is expected to make a court appearance Tuesday. (Jeffrey Phelps\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\nThe man\u00a0accused of\u00a0assassinating conservative activist\u00a0Charlie\u00a0Kirk\u00a0at a Utah university\u00a0was charged on Tuesday with a number of criminal offences, including aggravated murder.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors confirmed they will be seeking the death penalty for\u00a0Tyler Robinson, 22, if he is convicted of killing Kirk last week at Utah Valley University.<\/p>\n
Robinson, 22, also faces charges related to a firearms offence,\u00a0obstruction of justice,\u00a0witness tampering and committing a\u00a0violent offence in the presence of a child. The last count relates to killing Kirk while children were present at the event, including near the stage.<\/p>\n
Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray said prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty “based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.”<\/p>\n
“I do not take this decision lightly and it is a decision I have made independently as county attorney,” Gray told a news conference in announcing the charges on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Charlie Kirk speaks during a town hall meeting on March 17 in Wisconsin. The suspect in his killing is expected to make a court appearance Tuesday. (Jeffrey Phelps\/The Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Kirk, 31, was shot dead on Wednesday\u00a0as he spoke with students on campus on Orem, about 64 kilometres south of Salt Lake City. Prosecutors have said Robinson shot\u00a0Kirk\u00a0in the neck with a bolt-action rifle from the roof of a nearby campus building.<\/p>\n
Robinson was scheduled to appear on camera for a virtual court hearing Tuesday afternoon. It was unclear whether he had an attorney.<\/p>\n
Gray said the accused\u00a0is being held in county jail without bail. At the news conference, the prosecutor\u00a0declined to comment on\u00a0whether he consulted Kirk’s widow about seeking the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Robinson not\u00a0co-operating with investigators, authorities say<\/p>\n
Kirk, a dominant figure in conservative politics, became\u00a0a confidant of U.S. President Donald Trump\u00a0after co-founding Arizona-based Turning Point USA in 2012, one of the nation’s\u00a0largest political organizations. He brought young\u00a0conservative\u00a0evangelical Christians into politics. His killing has raised fears about increasing\u00a0political violence in a deeply polarized United States.<\/p>\n
Robinson was arrested\u00a0late Thursday near St. George, the southern Utah community where he grew up.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Utah governor comments on Robinson:\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758053528_624_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Utah governor says suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting became \u2018radicalized\u2019<\/p>\n
Authorities are sharing new details about Tyler Robinson, accused of fatally shooting right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Utah\u2019s governor described him as a smart young man who became radicalized. His alleged actions continue to fuel political division across the U.S.<\/p>\n
Investigators have spoken to Robinson’s relatives and carried out a search warrant at his family’s home in Washington, Utah, about 390 kilometres\u00a0southwest of where the shooting happened.<\/p>\n
While authorities say Robinson hasn’t been co-operating with investigators, they say his family and friends have been talking.\u00a0Utah Gov. Spencer Cox\u00a0said over the weekend that those who know Robinson say\u00a0his politics shifted left\u00a0in recent years and he spent a lot of time in the “dark corners of the internet.”<\/p>\n
Investigators are working on finding a motive for the attack, Utah’s governor said Sunday, adding that more information may come out once Robinson appears for his initial court hearing.<\/p>\n
In the days since Kirk’s assassination, Americans have found themselves\u00a0facing questions\u00a0about rising\u00a0political violence, the deep divisions that brought the nation to this point and whether anything can change.<\/p>\n
Despite calls for greater civility, some who opposed Kirk’s provocative statements about gender, race and politics criticized him after his death. Many Republicans have led the push to punish anyone they believe dishonoured him, causing both public and private workers to lose their jobs or face other\u00a0consequences at work<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man\u00a0accused of\u00a0assassinating conservative activist\u00a0Charlie\u00a0Kirk\u00a0at a Utah university\u00a0was charged on Tuesday with a number of criminal offences, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-148774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}