Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot

Mike Lee of Utah have said that there was an incident there. The school as well said that there was apparently shots that had rung out while Charlie was speaking. But again, this is all happened in the last few minutes. So, you know, we want to make sure we’re right when we report all that news out to you. Hi Jackson is joining our coverage now. Hie, I remember Charlie Kirk speaking at the Republican National Convention just this summer talking about his young children. He’s a married father with two young kids and just talking about how much time he was spending both campaigning for the president but also trying to be a dad as well. and and he is somebody who is not afraid to sort of mix it up with people, especially on college campuses. He enjoys doing that, debating people and defending President Trump’s policies. It’s unclear what happened here, what the motive was here, but but some political violence in some type of capacity is what it looks like. College campuses in so many ways are his bread and butter. Tom, as you well know, he conservative MAGA activist movement. He the name that anybody in politics would know which is why the news uh of this report coming out is so stunning. I want to share with you a bit Tom and I’m just joining our coverage here. We’ve been working uh here in Washington around the country to report out what we know here. I can tell you that former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffitz was at this event. I know I believe you played a little bit of sound from him earlier. I just want to go through some of what he has said publicly now. uh Jason Chafitz out uh about this incident said that he was he heard shot uh it came after Kirk was apparently asked or there was a question at this event specifically about transgender shooters according to former Congressman Chaffitz at that point he said he did not see blood he did not see Charlie Kirk getting hit but he did see Kirk immediately fall backwards when he heard that noise we’ve been playing this video here of that crowd dispersing rapidly uh Kirk very well known again in Republican politics which is why it is not at all surprising ing Tom, to see that the president has made a statement about Kirk. Donald Trump knows who Charlie Kirk is. President Trump knows Charlie Kirk. You talk about the Republican convention. That is one of many times that Kirk has delivered speeches, has campaigned uh on behalf of Republicans, on behalf of conservatives. We also know that the FBI director Cash Patel has posted about this, has talked about this as well, saying that agents are headed to the scene, that they are aware of what happened, these reports here that they are investigating obviously, and that the FBI stands in full support of that ongoing response. Uh it this has uh the word, the report of this shooting here has spread like wildfire, Tom, throughout the conservative community. Uh and and everybody wants to know how he’s doing. We’re working on that. Hie, stand by for us. We have another bit of news here that we’ve just gotten in now that NBC News has confirmed. Uh this is our reporter Michael Cosner who’s reporting this. A suspect is in custody and police are investigating the shooty at Utah Valley University. Students are alert this afternoon. Obviously told to to be aware and probably shelter in place. We have a witness now who’s joining us by by phone. His name is Justin Hickens. He apparently was at the scene of the shooting. Justin, what did you see? What did you hear? Uh, I was about 20 minutes away on Charlie’s left. Uh, I had gotten there probably just a few minutes before noon. It was there was thousands of people there. Um, unfortunately there was no metal detectors. There was no there was security by Charlie, but you know, anybody could have shown up with whatever. Unfortunately, I I way down close on the side. And the first interaction about 10 minutes. It was a a religious related exchange and then um who stepped up ironically coincidentally who asked a question about shooting and about 60 to 90 seconds in we just saw we heard a big loud shot. I saw a bunch of blood come out of out of Charlie. I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp and um everybody dropped to the ground and uh luckily there were no other bullets sprayed into the crowd because nobody was really able to go anywhere. It was just like a big ultra pleasure theater outdoor venue and uh you know lots of screaming, lots of yelling uh you know lots of bodies on top of each other and after a couple minutes people got up and kind of running you know getting out of there. there were some some gates, some barriers that had been pushed aside and knocked over and people were able to move and uh I started to to move quickly and then kind of realized I said, you know, I think I think we’re okay and I kind of stopped stopped walking away and I kind of all of a sudden officer walking with this very elderly gentleman with white hair and uh they had him arrested on his knees screaming about uh his rights and and all that stuff. And they they cussed him and put him away and and uh these three other people said, “Yeah, that’s the guy. That’s that was the shooter.” And uh people had people had said that they had seen him there early. He got he got to the event really early, was kind of walking around talking to a lot of people, just this elderly gentleman. But that’s all I got for you. No, that’s that’s a lot. And I’m I’m going to keep you on the on the air with us because this is important what you saw. People who haven’t seen these events, these turning point events, these, you know, these events with Charlie Kirk, people can go up, there’s a microphone usually set up and people can try to debate him or bring up a question or a point set up before the shooting. What what exactly was happening because you touched upon that. Well, I couldn’t exactly tell how many, but I’m sure there was maybe 15 to 20 people in line to to talk to, you know, enough to where it probably felt like it was going to take a good good while to get through everybody. And he had only gotten through one exchange with an individual. And honestly, it it was kind of getting drawn out a little bit too much. the crowd was getting a little restless like, “Hey, we’re we’re talking too much on this religious topic. Let’s go to something else.” And so finally they wrapped up and then somebody else got up there and like I said for about 60 to 90 seconds there was an exchange about mass shootings, transgenders uh involved in mass shootings and uh ironically that’s that’s when the shot went off. And then what when you heard the shot, did it sound like it was close near to where he was speaking or did it sound like it was coming from afar, maybe in the back of the crowd or could you tell? No, it sounded like it was the back of the crowd. Um, which was which was pretty wild. I don’t know though. It’s, you know, it’s like it must have been closer. But then again, it’s like if it was that close, how did nobody else, you know, see this man pulling a gun out of his, you know, side or pocket or whatever? So once once he was shot, once Charlie was shot, was there any first aid? Could you see? Do you know if paramedics were able to get to him? Was there any type of sort of first responders on the campus? Well, there there were about 15 to 20 people, you know, right behind him, whether that was security, whether that was medical, whether that was whoever. But as soon as he was shot, he, you know, just kind of went limp, fell over, and then everybody just dropped and went down. and I had bodies on top of me and I was just praying. I was just like, I hope I hope there’s not, you know, a bunch of stuff spraying into the into the into the crowd here because everybody’s a sitting duck right now. You know, we we sort of all witnessed what happened to President Trump when he was on the campaign trail uh in in Pennsylvania and what happened there. When when this was happening, I mean, did it kind of register in your head? Someone’s trying to kill Charlie Kirk? Oh, yeah. Immediately. Immediately. I mean, for a split second, I you know, I you kind of like, wait a minute. Is this is this really happening? And, you know, you saw the amount of blood that that came out upon the initial shot and you knew that this, yeah, it it did not look good. After after he’s shot and he sort of collapses back and people are kind of everyone hits the ground and people are piling on top of you. We’ve seen some videos of sort of the mass hysteria to run out of there. When does that happen? I think that probably started maybe about 10 to 15 seconds after you know people, you know, people give it a few seconds, realize there’s no more shots being fired. Now they’re now their time to to take a chance and get out of here. And so I was a little, you know, I stayed down a little bit longer and then finally realized after probably a good minute, minute and a half had gone by that there were no more shots. I was like, “Okay, I’m probably good to get up and and make a move.” These things happen so fast and and you said in your head you weren’t sure if it was real or not. Um I I you you I’m assuming you live in the in the state of Utah as well. You you you’ve likely heard gunshots before, you know, rifle shots, bug shots, what what whatever it may be. Um it was unmistakable that what was happening as it occurred, right? Uh but it happened so fast. I’m sure it could it could also be confusing. Yeah. Well, and people were just packed in. Pe people were shouldertoshoulder in there. I mean, it was when I first got there, I couldn’t I couldn’t even see the stage. And I and I said, “Hey, um, you know, let me try to it was just me by myself.” So, I thought, “Let me try to, you know, you know, maneuver my way down closer to the side.” And so, that’s that’s what I ended up doing. I was just completely, you know, to his left on the sidewall, but got about 20 yards away. I mean, I was there was one person in front of me on the rail. Yeah. And did the crowd seem welcoming? I mean, we we see some red hats there. We know Charlie Kirk was a a supporter uh of of the president, one of his most vocal supporters. Was it was it sort of friendly to to Charlie Kirk or was it hostile? I would say about 97 98% friendly. There was a a small faction up on a balcony with a trans flag and lots of different rainbow colored hairds and um you know interesting looking uh characters let’s say that were kind of barking back and yelling and shouting. Um but for the most part I would say 97 98% um uh you know welcoming and friendly. You know, when we look at this shot right here that we’re freezing because we don’t want to show the moment that he was shot, but this is maybe a millisecond before that bullet uh apparently enters his his neck. It doesn’t look like he has anyone around him. I know you said there were people there that were sort of some kind of security, but at least around him there was no sort of plexiglass, no kind of barrier. I mean, at least we can’t see it. What do you remember seeing? Nothing. I mean, yeah, maybe the closest individual was still, you know, 20 feet away from him. I mean, he was just at his table and his chair and and uh yeah, so I’m I’m actually surrounded by a bunch of SWAT There’s a bunch of SWAT people going through campus right now. I’m just I’m inside with a group of people that was pulled inside to uh you know, give testimony and stuff like that. So, it’s uh Justin, I I do have another question here. Yeah, I we don’t know this area as well. You know, some of our viewers may not know this area as well. How far is the closest hospital would you say to the to the the school? Very close actually. Pro like I mean gosh couple miles. The Utah Valley Medical is it’s you know one of the the best hospitals outside of stuff in downtown Salt Lake and and that’s just a couple miles away. So it’s very close. You can you can drive there from here. If it’s just me stopping at lights, I can get there in five minutes. and and it has it has an emergency room got there. Oh yeah, absolutely. The some of the best in the states. Stand by for us for a second. I’m going to read a new statement we have from the university which says, “Today at about 1210 p.m. a shot was fired at the visiting speaker, Charlie Kirk. He was hit and taken from the location by a security. Campus police is investigating. A suspect is in custody.” So, this kind of lines up with everything that you’ve been telling us, Justin, over the last 5 minutes or so. Um, going back to the suspect you saw, that elderly man who was being taken down, what else do you remember? Were you able to put eyes on him? Did you see any type of weapon? How he was dressed? No, I mean just all I saw was what you see in the video there. But by the time, you know, I put eyes on him. he was already uh you know basically in cuffs and and had multiple officers surrounding him and you know but but it looks like a collared shirt and uh you know just uh sorry I got I got SWAT team people walking by me with with rifles out here so it’s a little little interesting but uh um yeah yeah man just as as you say that we’re actually seeing the video yeah we’re looking at a shot now a live a live shot or some video from from our affiliate KSL there that’s showing just scores of police officers, uh, first responders, emergency vehicles almost sort of blocking and setting up a perimeter around the school where this was. Was this sort of in the middle of the school? Was this um the central of the school or or is this kind of an outdoor pavilion? Yeah, it’s an outdoor amphitheater basically where you know he’s set up is at the at the bottom level and then there’s uh you know basically crescentshaped steps that kind of uh climb up and and uh continue to uh I guess rise up as you go back further and further away from the stage area. And then is is this Charlie Kirk? I mean I I don’t know how much you follow him. Is this your first time seeing him live or has he had been has he had been to this university or this area for a while? First time seeing him live. I mean, I’d seen plenty of videos um you know, plenty of videos online and on X and stuff and was excited to come attend this event. Um you know, he was supposed to come back at the end of September to to Logan, Utah, which is a lot further away. So, I was excited to attend this one and and just kind of just, you know, see what was going on. Yeah. And then if you could describe the moment again u just because some people may be tuning in right now. Justin, you were you said you were on the left side of where this happened. Not too far from from Charlie Kirk himself. Talk to us again about what you saw when you heard that first gunshot go off. When I heard the first gunshot go off, all of a sudden, I just saw an eruption of blood, you know, come out of Charlie’s chest and then kind of his whole body recoil and go limp and and uh, you know, it just took a split second and I was like, is this is this really happening? Is it, you know, and and basically everybody just screamed and fell to the floor. But, uh, it looked like a lot of a lot of blood came out. A lot of blood was lost. It did not look good. But it looked like, you know, looked like a fatal shot. But, you know, I hope it’s not. I pray that it’s not. Yeah. As you say this and and you mentioned prayer. Um, we have a a message now on X from the defense secretary Pete Hagath saying, “Prayers for Charlie Kirk, an incredible Christian American and human being. May the healing hand of Jesus Christ be upon him.” You know, you you were talking about a pretty graphic scene and a pretty violent injury. I I I don’t know if you’re a doctor or not, but from what you saw, I I mean, how bad did this look? It sounds pretty bad. It looked really bad. It looked I mean, I I saw a lot of blood leave his body instantly um before, you know, it’s not it’s not like we heard a shot and we saw him fall to the ground. We we saw a lot of blood leave his body instantly instantly upon impact. And and and did you hear more than one gunshot or was it just one? You know, I couldn’t remember if there was a second, but I definitely the one and luckily there wasn’t there wasn’t more than, you know, if there was a second one right away. You know, I think it was just the one, but otherwise it wasn’t any more than two. Um and did did it look like anybody else in the audience or anybody else with Charlie Kirk had also been hit? No, no, it was just him and then everybody went down and then that was, you know, as I’m sitting there with bodies laying on top of me, I’m just listening. I’m listening for more shots. That’s the only thing I’m doing. I’m just like, okay, are we is are there more? Are there more? There more. There’s none. There’s none. There’s none. That’s good. That’s good. That’s good. That’s good. And uh just kind of playing that back in my mind and just thinking, I I can’t I can’t believe this is this is happening. How did this How did this happen? How did we let this happen? and how, you know, just just bummed there wasn’t u metal detectors or something. Um cuz yeah, like I said, it was just, you know, everybody just kind of showed up and and um and it was crowded. It was my my guess is that there were probably at least three or 4 thousand people there. It was incredibly crowded. You had people on on rooftops, walkways, overpasses. Yeah. You know, Justin, I’ve asked you so many questions and I’m realizing I I haven’t asked you an important question, which you you were sort of alluding to there. I mean, have you just taken a second to think about what happened? You you went there to to watch somebody talk about politics in America where there’s freedom of speech, where democracy is still alive, and yet in the past couple years, we’ve seen some real horrific political violence. And and you just witnessed it just steps from where you were. Yeah. No, it uh it’s I’m just kind of taking it all in right now, you know. Unfortunately, it’s u Yeah, I mean it’s uh it’s it’s very frustrating. Um and uh yeah, it’s it’s it’s tragic, but um yeah, there there needs to be there needs to be freedom of speech. There there needs to be, you know, toleration for for all viewpoints. And uh unfortunately, you know, this this does not look good for for a particular side. Um you know uh it’s just it’s just it’s just sad, you know. So obviously this person who shot him was deranged, but um yeah, it’s just a sad day. Justin, we we thank you for being with us. I’m sure our producers are going to have you stand by for us if we get any more information. We’re going to kind of want want your perspective. I do want to bring in our national law enforcement and intelligent correspondents. intelligence correspondent Tom Winter. Tom, what are you hearing from your sources about either the suspect or what happened there on the campus of Utah Valley University? Yeah. So, Tom, it appears that one individual uh fired this shot. Uh still clearing the campus. Uh as you just heard from our eyewitness, a fairly incredible report from the scene. a SWAT team and other law enforcement currently going uh through the buildings of campus. Obviously going through uh the grounds there that have now well been cleared out from the students from the shot that you’re looking at there on the left which was taken moments before this shot was fired uh to the upper chest neck area of Charlie Kirk, a conservative commentator. Uh right now uh we have not received official confirmation on the name of the individual that has been taken into custody and if in fact that will ultimately be the individual that’s been charged as a result of this incident. The condition of Kirk uh as of this hour is currently unknown. I will tell you, Tom, that everybody in law enforcement in the intelligence uh counterterrorism threat space is paying very close attention to this shooting because it is part of a disturbing trend that they’ve been focused on. Starting with the two assassination attempts uh against Donald Trump while he was running for office. You had the targeted assassination here in New York City of a healthcare CEO. You had an arson attack on the governor of Pennsylvania, uh a targeted shooting attack just several weeks ago, last time you and I uh were on the air talking about a shooting like this on 345 Park Avenue. Uh and right now, law enforcement, among other incidents, by the way. Uh right now, top law enforcement officials in this country, state, local, federal, all paying attention to what is a disturbing trend, and it’s this that people are using violence to solve their differences or problems in these targeted shooting attacks. It is something that uh from a terrorism standpoint, we’ve used terrorists uh we’ve seen terrorists rather do this uh in this country before and obviously abroad uh but now individuals are acting out instead of trying to solve differences in a democracy are apparently trying to take it upon themselves uh to fire weapons at individuals or attempt to fire weapons at individuals. also using fire as we saw with the Shapiro attack in Pennsylvania and as we saw uh the attack on a uh group of uh of uh elderly uh Jewish uh in and is uh Jewish individuals in Colorado who were just supporting uh the hostages that were taken by Hamas a fire attack there. So uh this is top of mind. It’s been a discussion I’ve been having with law enforcement officials all this week and it is something that presents a very uh steep security challenge in this country where you’re on a campus uh whether you completely agree with Charlie Kirk or not uh is a place traditionally where uh speech has been a spot where it’s happened and now law enforcement has to consider uh what type of event is going to draw this type of action and how can we possibly defend it. Tom, it’s an enormous challenge. Well, yeah, and you talk a lot about the threats and we’ve been seeing some of the reporting come in specifically around New York City because of what’s happening both with Israel and Hamas, but also as we get closer to 911. But we are talking now about Utah, a state that is a red state, a state friendly to President Trump, a state that does not have very strong gun laws uh whatsoever. Um and and a place from we heard from we heard from our eyewitness that was very friendly to Charlie Kirk, right? saying 97% if not more of the people in that crowd were supportive of Charlie Kirk. But when we talk about threats, Tom, what are there still serious threats when it comes to people like Charlie Kirk? And I guess where I’m going here is that should there have been maybe more security? But it’s also the same time he he was speaking maybe to a friendly crowd, so that wasn’t necessary. Yeah, I think everybody needs to take a look at when a crowd is friendly or not. It only takes one person in a crowd uh to create an environment like this. as a society, we have to really have a serious discussion now on how we’re going to deal with this going forward. I mean, are we going to have events where people try to speak uh at universities and they’re surrounded by bulletproof glass? Could a a university afford Look at the size of that crowd, Tom. Uh could they afford the ability to use magnetometers and go person by person? I mean, when when is an event enough? We we were just talking a couple weeks ago about the shooting at the uh at the Catholic school in Minnesota. I mean there the doors locked after uh once the services started so there was even best security practices there and still the individual fired fire fired through the windows. The the big thing here Tom is the pace at which this is happening. You know we used to have a couple of big mass shootings a year which is obviously everybody knows is one too many but now we’re seeing these events happening with increasing frequency and that also has law enforcement quite alarm. Well, besides these mass shootings, I mean, we’re talking about real political violence here against either candidates for office, candidates who are, you know, lawmakers like we had in Minnesota where where they were targeted inside their homes, literally shot at their front door. what happened to President Trump when he was on the campaign trail, the second attempt on his life, and now on this conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who appears to have been shot in the neck while speaking to the the vast majority of people there, a friendly crowd at Utah Valley State University, uh, in a horrific manner that eyewitnesses are telling NBC News, there was a lot of blood and it did not look good. And from the tweets that we are hearing, everyone across the aisle, whether it be Republican or Democrat, asking for people to pray for Charlie Kirk right now. Um, I do want to ask you one thing. There are so many different angles of this. We actually have an angle of when the shooting happened. We’re not going to show the actual moment of of of impact, if you will, when the bullet hits Charlie Kirk, but we can actually hear it. I want to ask our control room and our director if we can play that. I want to get your your your thoughts on the other end. Let’s play it now. there. It’s five. Okay. Now, five is a lot, right? I’m going to give you I’m going to give you some credit. Do you do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years counting or not counting gang violence? Great. So, so we stopped it there. You can hear the crowd. The audio kept playing. You can hear the crowd there. I I mean, it it is it is grossly ironic they were talking about mass shootings at the time when this actually happened, Tom. But you got to think from an investigative standpoint. They have a suspect in custody. They’re going to be looking at every angle of this. And so many people were shooting this because he has a massive social media presence and people were live streaming this and posting these videos on text on on X, I should say, and Instagram and WhatsApp and everywhere else. That’s exactly right, Tom. I mean, I’ve seen five or six different versions of this video for obvious reasons out of respect to Kirk or any victim. We wouldn’t show the moment of impact certainly to their family as well, and his condition is not yet known. Uh but yes, there’s a lot of evidence here uh for law enforcement. There’s obviously individuals, you can see them there in front uh that appear to be acting in a security capacity. They were talking about uh uh shootings and shooting incidents uh prior to that single shot being heard. We don’t hear any other shots being fired on at least on the videos that we’ve watched. Of course, that’s not definitive. Uh so we still need to get some more information about that. And it’s not clear from the video. Uh, you know, witnesses can react different ways. They can look behind them, to the side of them. You got a number of buildings around there. The way that the sound travels after a shot is fired. So, I don’t want to speculate. It would be ranked speculation to say where the shot came from. Uh, but obviously, uh, this is a this is an incident that certainly has people’s attention. You know, you mentioned the the political violence. I I did not want to ignore or not mention obviously what we saw in Minnesota earlier this summer, state lawmakers being attacked there. So that’s something that uh that folks are definitely tuned into as well as part of this uh whole trend. And Tom, just briefly, I’ve talked to law enforcement officials in other countries that have dealt with these incidents before, speaking specifically about Northern Ireland. The biggest thing that they say is that once this gets into society that you people start to think this is how they solve their differences with a Charlie Kirk, with a local lawmaker, uh that it takes a very long time for that to get out of society. That’s really a big concern, too. I I mean, just speak to anybody who lived through the 1960s and and everything this country experienced and all the loss that that that this country experienced with with the political assassinations that happened during that decade. Um I I do want to bring in something else, Tom, while I have you. Uh because we are getting a statement. Actually, you know, I’m I’m going to hit this. We’re getting a statement now from Turning Point USA. This is Charlie Kirk’s organization. Here’s what they say. This is a big update. They say this is an ongoing situation that they can confirm Charlie Kirk has been shot. He is in the hospital and we are praying for him at this time. That’s from a public relations manager for Turning Point USA. Uh confirming that both Charlie Kirk, which we know had been shot, he is now in the hospital and they’re trying to save his life. Tom, the point I was going to bring up with you is that from the eyewitness Justin we were speaking to who who witnessed this, he had heard and and and maybe he had even seen that the suspect that was in custody had gotten there real early, had been walking around. He had been noticed by other people. He was now in custody. And I bring that up because it it it rings to what we heard during the shooting in Butler that that the shooter had sort of scoped it out a little bit. you can remember walked gotten very close and then had positioned himself up on that rooftop. That’s right, Tom. And that’s consistent with the second attempted assassination uh of Donald Trump when a Secret Service agent uh spotted that individual who’s going to be going to trial soon uh hiding out in the bushes along the golf course there and the Secret Service agent fires and then calls it and just didn’t waste any single uh just didn’t waste any time. Um yes it it is generally uh what we see these days are individuals conducting a lot of planning. Um we saw that uh in other targeted shootings and incidents that we’ve seen this year. So obviously that’s a big concern. But what we’ve noticed in in that and what law enforcement has noticed in the course of of looking at it is that they haven’t prepared in a way where they’ve involved other individuals or they’ve taken actions uh where law enforcement would have known about the plot ahead of time. These are people that uh generally speaking have lawfully purchased weapons or purchased weapons in ways that would not have triggered uh the types of checks that would normally be done uh have not typically posted online ahead of time specific plans and have conducted searches and we conduct searches uh all of us every single day on our phones, computers, everything. Uh it’s not the type of thing that because of the first amendment, the fourth amendment uh in the rules of this country where law enforcement can look at our searches as US citizens uh in this country real time. And I think a lot of people feel strongly that that’s privacy uh that American citizens should have. Nobody’s advocating for a change in that at this stage. But certainly the idea that this person had arrived early to the event is consistent with other targeted political violence or targeted violence that we’ve seen this year. if in fact those accounts are accurate. So it would not surprise me in the least. Yeah. Um I want to bring in Hi Jackson now, our senior Washington correspondent to kind of talk our viewers and walk our our viewers through Charlie Kirk and the impact he’s had really over the last 10 years in American politics. You may not know the name Charlie Kirk at home. We know him because we cover the Republican party. We’ve covered President Trump and the MAGA movement. And he has become such a loud voice in this movement. He started out very very young working with Don Jr. launching podcast and then Turning Point USA which arguably has a lot of power on the right maybe as much maybe I’m going a little far here but it is it is it has a lot of power I was going to say almost as much as the GOP itself and and and what speaks to that is that Charlie Kirk spoke at the RNC this summer he spoke trying to get President Trump elected he also spoke at the 2020 RNC he was the youngest speaker at the 2016 RNC Tom as well the Republican National Convention he was named to Forbes’s 30 under 30. He is somebody where even if you don’t know your his name uh your kids in college might or in high school because he has led for years now what is really uh the biggest if not one of the biggest and and most quickly growing conservative activist organizations in the country you see him on a college campus in the video that we’ve been showing he has visited again and again uh having these conversations rallying for people and I think that is why Tom you are now seeing this widpread uh condemnation of political violence all across the political spectrum obviously among conservatives from the level of the president of the United States to the vice president of the United States saying that they are praying for Charlie Kirk and his young family uh that they are hoping for the best as we now know he is in the hospital. It is not clear what his condition is. You are seeing cabinet members uh for example Shawn Duffy saying they are horrified by the news that is emerging now out of Utah. You’re also seeing Democrats again on the other end of the political spectrum saying very similar things. uh condemning political violence. And I will I will tell you just to give you a sense of how it’s reverberating here in Washington during a meeting of one of the House committees. Uh Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green called for a moment of silence at the House Oversight Committee to when the news emerged that Charlie Kirk had been shot. And so members of Congress sat and took a moment of silence to to pray for Charlie Kirk uh and they are hoping he is okay. Another piece of this that is emerging as we are getting reporting in from our teams all across Washington including on Capitol Hill. You have senators, members of Congress, uh, House members who are friends. They are close with Charlie Kirk and it feels like from what we’ve been seeing, they are so concerned that they haven’t heard how he’s doing. They are desperate for an update on his condition. Somebody who has two kids uh, under the age of four, a three-year-old, a one-year-old. He’s turning 32 next month. He’s been married to his wife for about four years, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. A young man. Uh, Hie, stand by for We have another witness joining our coverage right now on the phone. Tyler Mceddon was on the opposite side from the gunman uh about a 100 yards from where Charlie Kirk was speaking if if if I’m correct. Uh Tyler, tell me what you saw and heard. Uh well, I was just uh waiting in line to ask a question. I was in the back, you know, waiting with other people, so I wasn’t really close. Um, you know, we were just discussing, you know, the the questions that we had like the people next to me were they had a question about veganism, you know, um, and I just hear I’m I’m looking at Charlie because he’s answering questions. You know, the first question was um, about religion and the second one that he was in the middle of answering um, was about gun violence actually. Um, and we just hear a pop, just a single pop. And I I I saw um Charlie’s head tilt back and he just fell backwards. And that’s kind of the moment that I realized, oh my gosh, something really bad just happened. Um and everyone else around me, like everyone in the in the crowd, you know, reacted, as you might expect, in a little bit of panic. Of course, um, for me personally, um, after I had not heard like any second shots, I wasn’t immediately worried. I didn’t I didn’t feel like, you know, it it seemed clear that whoever was doing this was not really going to target other people. So, um, I stayed relatively calm after that. Um, even did you see did you see did you see where the the shot had come from? Did you see the the gunman at all? No, I I I did not see the gunman at all. I I literally just heard the shot and then chaos. I I mean, you sound pretty calm now and and you said you thought it was just one shot, but I got to think this was incredibly jarring to see somebody you came to see speak be shot in real time. Yeah. I mean, I’m absolutely sure that it was one shot. No, no, I know that. But I’m saying, were you you had to be I’m just surprised this this wasn’t jarring to you. Or was it? Oh, it was like in the moment it absolutely was. Um, I kind of did get a little of adrenaline, you know, seeing seeing what had happened, seeing seeing people, but you know, I started I started seeing people like run through bushes and along the side of the building and like people trying to crowd toward the small place to the door and it it just occurred to me that like, you know, there’s a good chance of people trampling each other and that was really my bigger concern after that. So, I was trying to tell people like stay calm, you know, walk slowly. Um, because that wasn’t really the general vibe that I was getting from people, but after like I think that gradually that did start to set in with people that you know, we’re probably fine. And then we went we went to the lobby of the building um the main building at UVU. Tyler, did you see anybody take Charlie Kirk out of there? Did you see what he looked like after he was shot? Could you see anything in the in the seconds afterwards when he he sort of fell over, I think is the way you described it? No, no, I I couldn’t see anything. I talked with people afterwards. Um they were saying that some of the people near the front were saying that they’d seen blood. Um another lady that I talked directly to, she said that he’d been hit on the left side of the chest potentially. Um, and this is second hand account, so I’m not like I didn’t see that. Yeah. And then and then after he’s shot, I mean, does does the crowd realize what’s happening? Yeah, I think people realized pretty quick. There were there were people who were absolutely certain that, you know, that he wasn’t going to make it. Like within literally within 60 seconds, like I heard people going, “Oh my goodness, like it’s over for him.” like pray for him like because the gunshot wound was so severe. I’m assuming so, but also from a distance it looked again it looked pretty My initial assumption was that that he’d been hit in the head actually because I saw his head go back. Yeah, it sounds like it was such a a violent thing to witness. Were were you were you on um were you on campus to to just to ask him a question to debate him? Were you there just out of curiosity? I wanted to ask him a question. I I had a preparing question for him. And for our viewers who don’t really understand the Charlie Kirk Tour, I think it’s called the uh the American Comeback Tour. And it says prove me wrong, prove me wrong on the tent. He the the whole sort of premise of these events are that people can go and debate Charlie or ask him about something. Correct. Yep. That’s the premise. And and it drew huge crowds at Utah Valley University. Tell me why. Um well, you know, it’s Utah is a conservative state and this is Utah Valley, one of the most conservative uh I guess metropolitan areas in the country. So, we have tons of conservatives. People were excited. You know, the whole place was crowded. We had people in the, you know, the whole amphitheater was crowded. Um there was on the balconies and such like just tons of people everywhere. You had the protesters up top in the background. Yeah. You know, um obviously somebody got a gun into that outdoor amphitheater there. Um or I should just the amphitheater, but but someone got a gun and and brought it in there for this university. Is that uncommon? Are you a student there or is this is this something that I don’t know the exact laws you know or the rules on campus there? No, I’m I’m not a student at UVU so I don’t know all their exact policies. Um the you did you know mention security though or at least imply security. Um it did surprise me for the event. Um they had tickets um and I I had to print out a ticket and it had like a barcode, a QR code. I was expecting when I got here that I would have to pass through some kind of security. Um but that just wasn’t a thing. Uh no one checked the barcode or the QR code. Um there was no checkpoint to get in. It was just literally anyone could walk could walk in if they wanted. And then Tyler, your your thoughts having gone to a, you know, a political event to hear someone speak on a college campus and and for this violent event, you know, the shooting of a conservative activist to happen just steps in front of you. I mean, what are your thoughts? I mean, my immediate thoughts are just that, you know, this this was definitely an act of terror to intimidate people who want to have political discourse. I mean, um, that’s what Charlie was trying to do was trying to have a discussion, trying to invite discussion, have people come up and ask him questions to challenge his ideas. And, you know, I wanted to do that. And I’m I mean, obviously what I saw was was horrible. But kind of as a secondary point to that, I’m I’m disappointed I didn’t get to ask my question to Charlie. You know, that that was why I was there. Yeah. Uh Tyler McGette again, we thank you uh for talking to us. I do want to bring in retired FBI agent and current NBC News law enforcement analyst Rob Demo. Rob, this this might be a tough question for you, but I’m sure you have some experience. The reports are that he was either shot in the neck or the chest. We’re hearing that from eyewitnesses and also other reports from from people that have been out there. How much time do first responders have for a gunshot wound like that where it is near so many vital parts of the body to to try to save somebody? Yeah. So, I I I saw the video uh unedited and and I can tell you right now uh it is going to be tough to save him just from the amount of blood loss. I’ve had a friend John who was shot in Afghanistan through the neck and he got a few stitches in the front and a couple of stitches in the back and that was it and he was back on his feet. The neck is very uh vital in in certain parts and it looks like his corateed already was hit. Uh it was the neck. Um he did slump down, but the amount of immediate amount of blood loss that I saw, it is very very tough to to save someone from that. Not that they’re not going to try, but they absolutely had to get him in the ambulance as fast as they could and get him to the surgical center. Um and then they’re they’re going to have to really really work uh because that amount of blood loss is unbelievable. And I’ve I’ve seen it overseas in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh, and it’s really hard to survive. So, I I think uh there’s some challenges there. Um, and I I think your witnesses talked about it. Uh, depending on their view from where they were, not sure where he was shot, but the video that they shown uh really is pretty definitive that it was the neck. Yeah. When you see a crowd like that, Rob, and and this is obviously going to be in hindsight and and some Monday morning quarterbacking. Um, but when you see a site like this, and again, the eyewitnesses we talked to said this was a friendly environment, but it looks like it’s pretty open there, uh, should should they have done more? We can see security guards in the front. You’ll notice them right there, uh, with their sort of arms by their sides. Should there have been more here? And and I know this is again hindsight. It’s always one of those until it happens, you’re never really thinking about even with President Trump when you looked at at his assassination attempt. Now, I I think there should have been more at that one. And I think they should have reacted a lot differently at that one. Um, but people get complacent and he’s done a lot of these and he hasn’t had a violent encounter like this. So again, when you’re planning something like this, I think now it’s really going to change the the atmosphere of these. Uh, in fact, it was a friendly environment except for obviously a person who brought a gun in. um for them to not go through any screening for weapons. Again, talks to the complacency of having done this before and a lot of people showing up, even people that were were there to to counter him, uh and no violent encounters before. So, until it happens at one time, the first time it happens, everyone’s shocked. Um but now I think it’s really going to change the dynamic of everybody speaking that has political connotations uh of security for and it’s really going to be a challenge because an open event like this is tough for the secret service and that’s all they do that’s and they they have plenty of people to do it. I I did want to ask you this because this is not somebody who’s running for office. This is not somebody who’s been elected. This is somebody who is a conservative activist podcaster. Huge reach, massive presence on social media. very well known in conservative circles, has a lot of power when it comes to politics on the right, but again, he’s never run for office. He’s never been elected, and his life is in danger. What does that tell us? Well, again, we we talked about in the beginning that people are starting to take the violence into their own hands when they don’t agree. And he was out there to to have these conversations with both sides, and he enjoyed that. Um but now it’s it is it is people taking feeling that they have to solve things with violence is is getting on on both sides of the fence. Uh and it’s going to get tougher and tougher because you said he’s not running for office. So he’s he’s an influencer out there and someone was was angry enough to really take this out in this way and I think it’s going to change the dynamics in this country uh as we’ve seen with some of the the other political figures. all those ran for office. So, I think those were kind of one of those like it’s it’s turning up. But this one not running for office, just an influencer. And these influencers out speaking all the time. And I think the security business is really going to have to start taking a look at how do we secure a person like this that has uh this influence out there that goes out and and and has likes to have these confrontational um events. Yeah. How do you secure that? Yeah, it’s going to be super tough this year. We thank you for that. Stand by for us because I want to bring in Ray Don Desaine. She was up near the front of the crowd when Kirk was shot. Rayon, what did you what did you see? Well, um I was just up there. It was second debate. Uh they were talking about guns and the transgender issue that’s going on right now. And um all of a sudden, right, we heard it just like a pop. Saw Charlie all of a sudden just kind of leaned back. I thought he put his hand up, but looking at videos he didn’t. But his his eyes went back, his head went back and I just saw blood and then I kind of looked back over my shoulder to look up the hill and then all a sudden I’m like that’s a gun, you know. So we’re all dropping. So we all get on the ground and then they’re like, okay, you guys need to run. We got up by the time Charlie was already gone. So they took him off. Did you Were you Were you able to see them sort of take Charlie out after he had been shot? No, we were on the ground. We were on the ground. I just saw I just saw the blood in his head, you know. I saw the shot, heard it, and then um then yeah, just dropped to the ground. And and when you turned around, you said you looked up the hill and you saw a gun. What exactly did you see? Was it a long gun? Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Okay. Okay. I misunderstood you. When you turned up, what did you see up the hill? Um just everybody started to drop. Just everybody started to drop down cuz there was a lot of people there. And did it did it sound like the the the gun the gunshot had come from behind you? Yeah, it sound like it came from behind me. I I couldn’t be 100% sure. I have a some uh permanent hearing loss. Yeah. But that’s what it sound like to me that it came up from behind me. What did you think when you saw Charlie get hit? I mean, it’s it’s such a a terrible thing to have to witness. It seemed very um it seemed very surreal. Like like it wasn’t real. I’d be like, you’re like watching it from another point of view that you’re not really there. Were you there as a supporter, somebody that wanted to talk to him, debate him? What brought you to the event? No, I just wanted to watch. I just wanted to watch. I love Charlie Kirk. I watch a lot of his videos. I mean, I don’t agree on everything. Um, but there’s a lot of points I like and then I also learn a lot from the the more of the liberal left left side. Um, because I do like to know their point of view, too, cuz I like to have that open mind. And so I was just kind of there to be able to see it in live and be able to hear, you know, the back and forth. What was the temperature of the crowd? I mean, were people excited there? We We were hearing it was a lot of supporters. Mostly supporters. We were Yeah, we were having a lot of fun. Yeah, there was a lot of supporters there. The MAGA hats and Yeah. What kind of security presence did you notice around Charlie? Any at all? Uh, there was no there was no security going in. They didn’t even check for ticket look at tickets. Um he had security team and there was some police officer but it didn’t feel like it was a very large presence. Yeah. And then after after the shot and he goes down do do police do you hear sirens? Do police say anything? Is there any kind of screaming to get out? Um, you know, the screaming I heard to get out, it sounded more like it was from the crowd. And as we were running cuz normally how we came down because they had an area that was blocked off for just basic Charlie, you know, security and and that. And so we weren’t supposed to be down there, but that’s how we all ran out was through that way. Um, I saw um a couple cops with their their pistols kind of drawn, but they weren’t like pointed at anybody and per se. They just kind of had their their guns out holding them. Um, and then as I was leaving, there was a lot of uh police coming into the campus. The, you know, some other eyewitnesses we had spoken to said they had noticed the elderly man that was taken into custody that had been uh apparently arrested for the shooting. Police have confirmed that they have a suspect in custody. Did you notice I don’t know if you’ve seen the video on social media of the of the takedown, but had you noticed this man? Uh I didn’t notice him. Um, I was one of the I was there when it was fairly um sparse as far as the crowd. Um, cuz I got there early uh cuz I wanted to be up front. Um, so there by time I looked around there was tons of people and I I can’t say that I saw him. Um, and then finally your friends did you go solo or were you there with friends or family? Solo. Solo. Did Did people seem to get out okay? It didn’t look like anybody else was hurt in in the exit or cuz cuz I know there were fears of people getting trampled. Yeah, it was just one shot. No, no, but but but in the exit in the running away of the event. Run out. No, no, but I mean I got stepped on a little bit. I had flip I had the sandals on and they they fell off, but I was able to grab them and run. It was I mean it wasn’t anything that was dangerous getting out of there. Yeah. And and then again, this this we know this area, this part of of Utah, from what we heard from other eyewitnesses, very friendly to Charlie Kirk and and to the MAGA movement, to to President Trump. How surprised were you that this happened right in front of your eyes? Um, you know, I I kind of had like a I was hoping that there would been better security um just because you never know. Um because there are wackadoodles out there and you know, and who knows where they’re coming from. You know, they could be coming in. I mean, just because Utah’s is usually a safe state doesn’t mean that somebody from a, you know, that’s going to just come in or he may have been from Utah. Who knows? Um, I was just really disappointed in the actual security part of it. Yeah. No, no, I I I hear you on that. In in getting out, once you were able to get out of the amphitheater, were you able to get back to your car or get back to however you you got there, the bus, the whichever way you was, because we’re seeing like sort of a massive perimeter by law enforcement. Yeah. Yeah, we I got out real just fine. I mean, I parked a little ways away because the free I mean the parking for non- studentents. Um was just a little paid parking. Um and it was just a little bit of a trek, but it wasn’t that bad of a deal, but it wasn’t right there. So, I felt once I got past a few buildings, I felt fine. Okay, Ray Don Shane, we thank you for for joining us here in our special coverage as we cover what’s happened there uh at Utah Valley University. Uh an incredible scene there that’s happened. a a terrible and sad scene as well. Um, as we approach the top of the hour, uh, we’re getting close to 4 p.m. on the east here, 2 p.m. in Utah where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been hospitalized after just listening to a special report regarding uh, conservative Charlie Kirk shot in critical condition right now during an event at Utah Valley University. Suspect was about 200 yards away at a university building. Charlie Kirk, 31 years old, is in critical condition right now. We’ll continue to follow this through our next two and a half hours of news here today. We do have some news to get to right here at home. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I’m Sabrina Dami and I’m Mark Mhalland. Now at four, a worker at a Saratoga County restaurant is in critical condition at Alb Med and his work colleague is under arrest after a violent confrontation in the restaurant parking lot. The dangerous scene happened right outside of a bar in Malta. We’re learning more about uh the car pedestrian incident from earlier in the week, leaving one person critically injured and the driver now facing serious charges. This confrontation took place Monday night in the parking lot of the popular bar and restaurant Bentley’s Tavern right in Malta. Benny Nazi is live there right now. Good afternoon to you, Benny. What have you learned about the people involved in this awful incident? Sabrina and Mark, good afternoon to you guys. Well, state police have confirmed that the driver and the pedestrian are co-mp employees here at Bentley’s. And as a matter of fact, the restaurant just reopened right at the top of the hour at 4:00 after being closed yesterday. But we should note that it’s unclear if Monday’s night Monday night’s incident had to do with this elderly person from some social media videos, it appears had been sort of walking around and canvasing the area. But again, this is a fluid situation. That’s right, Tom. The latest information that we have coming from a university spokesperson is that the individual in custody is not a student. So the individual in custody in connection with this shooting, according to the university who began the initial investigation into this, says that the person in custody is not a student. They also say uh that this shooting happened from a from a center that’s located approximately 200 yards away. That’s well within the accuracy of any semi-automatic rifle. Tom, uh, the question now is if in fact that is what the ballistics ultimately show or did they recover a weapon from that location. The FBI and ATF are already at the scene. They’re going to be involved potentially in this investigation. Uh, certainly have provided their resources as well. That information uh coming officially from the ATF and from the FBI director Cash Patel. So that’s the information that we have as far as where the investigation is. They’re definitely combing through uh the past uh history and contacts with this individual with law enforcement. Uh there has been uh some speculation online and some focusing uh on this individual since there is video of the person in custody matching that up with some images that are online of a of a person who uh is uh is from that area, the general Utah area, and whether or not that person has been involved in protests or things in the past. Again, that’s information uh that is still being looked at by investigators. Uh we do not have a name that we can confirm or report at this time. And just because somebody’s taken into custody, uh I’ve done this far too often. There’s a number of people that sometimes could be taken, excuse me, into custody and then turn out uh that they actually have somebody else that’s ultimately arrested and charged with the crime. Uh you want to obviously go after uh anybody who’s suspicious initially in the course of these investigations. So that’s the latest that we have on this right now. They’ll obviously go through uh social media posts uh from whoever they think might be responsible for it and and then at some point obviously there’ll be formal charges that have been filed. But certainly the university feels confident in saying that the person that they believe is responsible for this. They had the campus police that was there and assigned to protect this event uh that they believe that the individual who’s responsible is in custody. And to recap, Tom, uh is not a student. All this in the background of what has been a really horrific uh year and a half now of political and targeted violence, two assassination attempts on then candidate, now president of the United States, Donald Trump. Uh we’ve had targeted shootings of CEOs and of office buildings here in New York City. Obviously, the uh attempted or the actual arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family, they were fortunately not harmed in that incident. We had the shooting of Minnesota lawmakers and the uh targeted attacks there just within the last couple of months. Uh we’ve also seen attacks against a group of uh uh of individuals who were supporting and protesting uh and out in support of the hostages taken by Hamas and Israel. They were attacked with a Molotov cocktail. So this has been a very difficult last 24 months and something that law enforcement, federal, state, local, all very much paying attention to. uh today something that’s been the focus of a lot of their work trying to get a handle on uh how this is happening and why it’s happening but the big concern Tom is that this is happening now with greater frequency and and obviously going to make it very difficult to protect these type of events. Uh Tom Winter we thank you. Stand by for us if you’re just joining our coverage again. We are covering the assassination attempt on conserv conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. It happened earlier this afternoon. He was speaking on his tour. You can see here under the tent, the American comeback tour. We’re not showing the moment that he was shot. It was a single shot from eyewitnesses, striking him either in the neck or the chest. Eyewitnesses saying there was a lot of blood there. He is a conservative activist who is very close to the Trump family. He worked for Don Jr. He also launched Turning Point USA, a very powerful political organization on the right. speaking at both the RNC in 2016 and of course just this past summer. We have a statement now from Don Jr. who says Charlie Kirk is one of the finest humans I know. Everyone please lift him and his family up in prayer. The president saying as well we must all pray for Charlie Kirk who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. God bless him. This is another statement here from the school saying UVU campus is closed. Classes are cancelled. those on campus secure in place until police officers can escort you safely off campus. We ask for your patience throughout this process. We are providing updates as best as possible. This is an ongoing and unfolding event. Again, Charlie Kirk shot on the campus of UVU earlier this afternoon, taken to the hospital right now. His status is unknown, but uh politicians, especially on the right, but also the left, asking for people to pray for him. pretty much every single cabinet member has come out and posted something on social media asking for prayers for both Charlie and his family. I do want to bring in our senior Washington correspondent Hi Jackson. And hi, as we talk about this this assassination attempt, right, on a political activist, you know, Charlie Kirk was not somebody who had been elected. He had never held office, but he was so powerful on the right and he made sure to be a vocal advocate for President Trump wherever he went. And President Trump noticed that and he knew that and he knew who Charlie Kirk was. He’s known who Charlie Kirk was since he first Tom when when you and I were both covering that 2016 campaign of then candidate Trump. Charlie Kirk was there fighting for the president who obviously ultimately became the president to the point where just recently you’ve seen the president called Charlie Kirk a fighter. He’s referenced what he calls his army of young people here. He’s called him just in the last 6 months or so a special talent saying he is out there. He is out there fighting for the Trump agenda and for the president and his administration. He is close with not just the president but with the Trump family uh more broadly here. You read of course the the reaction that we are just getting in from Donald Trump Jr. from Eric Trump for example. We are also hearing from him saying that Charlie Kirk is a great friend and an amazing person. You see it here. Eric Trump goes on to say the president’s son that his family will be praying for him, his wife Erica and their two children. Again, two kids uh two toddlers essentially. Uh at this point you talk about the range of reactions on the political spectrum. obviously on the conservative side, but we are also hearing from, for example, Gabby Gfords herself a victim of political violence, saying she is horrified to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot, saying, “Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.” And I will tell you, Tom, in just the last 30 seconds ago, we we also heard from Vice President Kla Harris, of course, the political opponent of President Trump’s in this past election, saying that she I’m going to read this to you. I don’t know if we have it built yet. Here it is. She says, “I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah.” She says she and her husband Doug send their prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family. And she goes on to also condemn political violence, saying it has no place in America. Tom Winter ran through that litany uh unfortunately of political violence that has happened in this country over the past several years, relaying his reporting of course of concerns that this is escalating. And when you talk about somebody like Charlie Kirk, Tom, you talk about his social media reach. His team says that every month he reaches something like a 100red million people online. He’s got a voice. He’s got a megaphone. And now there are so many people not just in this country but presumably around the world who are watching for any information about his condition. Tom. Yeah. Hi Jackson for us. Hie, we appreciate that. We are getting an update now from the school. An important update. Um, this is a spokesperson for Utah Valley University saying that they confirmed Kirk, the suspect, the suspect who fired at Charlie Kirk fired from the Lucy Center or the Losi Center, a building about 200 yards away. The suspect had been taken into custody and is not a student. There are some videos circulating on social media that we are trying to clear of the suspect in custody and we’ll bring that to you as soon as we get it. Um, Tom Winter, if you’re still with us, we we now have confirmation that this was not an attack from up close. We had heard this from eyewitnesses. It sounded like the shot came from behind the crowd. We’re now talking about 200 yards away. From what we know about guns, long guns, and and the type of sort of attack this could have been. What What do we What can we glean now from the 200 yard distance? Yeah. I mean, I think Tom, based on that distance, that’s well within the range of any sort of semi-automatic rifle. That’s not something that that’s something that would be on t the typical range of somebody using a handgun, but for the type of weapons that would be easily purchasable in Utah and frankly many states in this country uh without uh without a lot of effort uh would be well within range of of that distance. So nothing uh sticks out to me. If it was 7 800 yards, something like that, I would say, okay, well that would point to a level of proficiency that frankly we just never see. So, but at that that yardage and distance, uh that’s not something that would be surprising that a a common weapon and frankly somebody with uh any sort of practice could be able to to hit something from that far away. I I do want to put an asterisk on all this. You know, the the only information we’re getting here, Tom, is coming from university officials and and I don’t happen to work with this university uh and and don’t have any contacts there. Uh cover mostly the eastern US. Uh but we’re not getting anything official from the FBI. We’re not getting anything official from our uh state and local partners that we regularly interact with. Neither myself nor my colleague Andrew Blancine who covers the West Coast. Uh so that distance of 200 yards, you know, that’s where uh unless somebody says that’s where they found uh shell casings or weapon that was left behind. I do want to say it is still early in the investigation. Same thing same thing that I mentioned before with the suspect in custody. You know, I I just a couple minutes ago I cautioned that uh I’ve seen many incidents where somebody is initially taken into custody only it turns out that that individual is not the one who’s ultimately uh charged. So, we’re still waiting to get more details from officials. We have not yet had a briefing from the school. And so, once we get some of that information, I think it’ll shed a lot more light on it. It’s just the traditional uh you know, this incident is not yet or just approximately two hours old. Just a lot of caution on the initial reports here as we get them. Yeah. And it’s interesting, we’re also not getting a lot of reporting on his status at the hospital. We just know that he was rushed to the hospital. An eyewitness told us it takes about 5 minutes to get there from that university. This is the largest public university in Utah. A and that he was being treated there, but there have been no other updates. The vice president said in another tweet to pray for Charlie Kirk in his darkest hour. again, eyewitnesses describing a lot of blood and that he has lost uh it was vice president um JD Vance I was talking about uh it was another tweet that he just put out but um lot of blood they had seen they had seen him recoil they’re not sure if he was shot in the chest or the neck but it was somewhere up there and our law enforcement an analyst Rob Demo said it is it is very tough not impossible but a very tough gunshot wound to sort of bounce back that concludes this NBC News special report we’re going to have much more ahead on our streaming network NBC News Now, we thank you for watching. I’m Tom Yamos. So, because processing something like this, I mean, you mentioned your heart is still racing and and probably still replaying what it is you saw and heard. Oh, yeah. 100%. It’s definitely really traumatic. And I didn’t really realize how shocked and traumatized I was until I mean, at least 30 minutes after I was really, you know, I just couldn’t stop crying. And I mean, it’s so sad and it’s so evil. Um, so yeah, I’m just glad nobody else got hurt, but big prayers out to Charlie Kirk and his family. And from your description, Sarah, it sounds like you were sitting fairly close to the front. Yeah, I was in the fourth row back. Um, that’s when I saw him just get hit right in the neck, lower neck, and just blood spurting out all over. It was awful. You had come here to this event to hear him speak. Why did you want to come and what were your thoughts about him as you made the decision to be here on a on a Wednesday morning? Yeah, so I have classes today or did have classes? Um, I had my morning class and afterwards I went to see Charlie Kirk. I mean, he’s an awesome guy. I agree with all of his political stances. Um, and I was really excited to see him, especially at my own university. So, yeah, just going out there to support him before my next class and what a traumatizing experience it was. So, yeah. And and I think a lot could be said for the fact that at an event like this, something like that happens. Have you been thinking about that since this occurred? Yeah, definitely. I thought it was really ironic that he started talking about gun violence right when he was shot. I mean, it’s just awful. And honestly, Charlie is a hero. I truly believe that. And I believe his family are also heroes. And I wish the best for them. Finally, Sarah, what about you personally? because witnessing something like this, I can only imagine I have not witnessed something like that. And so, what do you where do you go from here and and what do you think about as you process this this tragic day? Yeah. Uh, good question. I’m definitely going to be seeing my counselor. Um, I will have a lot of therapy. Um, and honestly, I think it’s just going to bring me closer to God. And, um, yeah, through the whole experience, just lots of prayers and yeah, it’s going to be a lot of personal work. Sarah, I really appreciate you spending a few minutes. Thank you. Best to you and your mom. Thank you so much. So, here on the west side of campus, just yet another voice of someone who was at this event. And the event happened just right behind us. In fact, I’ll step out of the way and let photographer Ray here zoom in again just to show you. And I know we’ve seen a number of vantage points of this, but that tent in the distance just past that overpass is a is where Charlie Kirk was speaking. And then all of those uh bleacher type places in the foreground or background I guess uh that is where people were sitting. In fact, from this distance I can see a lot of personal items that were clearly left behind in the mayhem of the shooting and now a lot of law enforcement are on scene and there is crime scene tape up around the area. This is about as close as we can get from this particular vantage point. But we see police from just in this area, Utah Valley University, Provo, uh, Oram, and then other uh, agencies as well have responded in addition the federal agents. And so this is uh, now sort of eerily quiet on the west side of campus. A lot of people have moved on, left campus. We’re just seeing some stragglers walking through, but it seems like everyone who walks by was there. They heard what happened or they saw what happened and then many of them ran in the aftermath of the shooting. And as you heard with Sarah there talking to me, her heart’s still racing. This was a tra a terrifying, scary ordeal for her to witness and to to process. And certainly that’s only just beginning for her to to deal with the feelings and emotions of what she’s seen. So that’s the latest from the west side of the campus. We’ll send it back to you for now in studio. Daniel Woodruff, we appreciate that. I I can’t imagine for those folks who were there describing that traumatic scene. Absolutely. Let’s go to news specialist Alex Cabrer. He’s at another vantage point on campus. Alex, you’ve been talking to people. What are you hearing now? Right. We’ve been in a parking lot here for about an hour or so chatting with some people, some students, some others who just came here for this debate. And you can still see there is still a little bit of traffic as people continue to leave this area trying to get back to wherever they’re going to. But uh I’m going to interview somebody named Tayy West Morland and she’s special to me because this is actually my niece and never really interviewed a family member before. But Ty was on campus uh when this happened, heard the gunshots and so I found out she was here. So that’s kind of terrifying when you have a family member here. But Ty, tell me what did you tell everybody what what did you hear? You know what I mean? What what did you hear and then what happened? Yeah, my friend and I got there pretty late. And so when we arrived, we were right in the building behind him. And we just heard a gunshot and everyone just started screaming. It was really chaotic. And we just ended up turning and running. There was just crowds of people screaming and then just like shooter, shooter, gun. And then we ended up getting outside, but it was chaotic for a really long time. Really scary. Yeah. It’s just one of those things like what do you what do you do when you hear that gun shot? You you freak out. I was kind of like in disbelief for a second and then everyone was running and then yeah, I just started booking. My friend, threw her drink and we just got out of there like as fast as we could. But this is always something that happens somewhere else. Yeah. No, it’s odd to be a part of something like this. was horrible, of course, and really sad for him and his family, but yeah, it was really scary. I’m glad everyone got out. Okay. Okay, Ty, give me a hug. I’m happy you’re doing okay, that we met up and that you’re doing well. Thanks, T. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Thank you. So, that’s again I know that my niece is a student here, so I heard that she was here and kind of like wasn’t answering her phone at first and um hoping everything is okay and I’m happy she’s okay. Um, but just one of the many people here that just came out just to hear a debate, to be a part of something like this. Charlie Kirk is a big personality. A lot of people like what he has to say. A lot of people don’t like what he has to say, but either way, on a college campus, you think this is something where you would maybe hear something you don’t believe in or something that you do believe in. And uh, and then something like this happens. So, it is sad. A lot of people were witness. I heard one. It was pretty chaotic. So, it was it was it was crazy. Siri, you were watching that. What went through your mind as you as this was just happening? Um, a lot of things were going through my mind. Um, I was thinking about how I wasn’t supposed to be there today and how I was supposed to be at work, but then I got cancelled. Um, and I like I was scared. It was I realized that that was a gunshot cuz I’m short so I didn’t see above the crowd. I couldn’t really see Charlie when it happened. But um yeah, it was scary. What interested you most about Charlie Kirk and why you came out today? Um well, I would say he’s just an interesting person. I honestly haven’t listened to a ton of his stuff, but I knew that he is like a pretty strong conservative Republican figure and I lean more that way. So, I just was interested to see what questions other students at UVU had to ask and what his response would be to them is really it. Austin, you followed him a little bit more. Tell me just your thoughts. Yeah. No, I mean I I really respect Charlie as a person. He’s a great person. He’s a family guy, a good Christian. Like, he has strong beliefs. They chatted a lot about religion right before it happened. I mean, there was only one question before he got before the shooting. But I I really think he’s a a great person and he he sticks up for what he believes in and I respect that and I enjoy watching him debate people. He knows what he’s talking about and he comes from a state of logic and and I respect that a lot. And so I I’ve I’ve watched his videos for a while for years now honestly. So I think yeah, he’s a he’s a really interesting person. I was pretty excited to hear that he was coming to Utah so that he could see you know what what Utah’s about and have his support group here because I know a lot of people really respect him here. So, it’s pretty sad that it had to happen here. Well, I was going to say just the fact that there was a shooting, he was shot and an event like this. Your thoughts about that? Honestly, it’s it’s kind of shocking just seeing how many hundreds and hundreds of people were there in support of him. Um, and you know, I I think it’s really sad. I think people were trying to prove a point. It didn’t change my thoughts on the right to bear arms at all. And so, it’s I mean, it seems like it was kind of for nothing. And I think people just want recognition and they want to think they’re they’re doing something in support of their beliefs and I think that’s pretty messed up. So Austin Watt, Sierra Arbon, I appreciate you being willing to chat with me for a few minutes. Everybody just trying to take this in what happened here uh at UVU. And of course trying to get away from campus is going to take a while. If I can actually just push the camera over here. I didn’t prep Stuart for this, but if you look over here, there’s this line of cars. And so it’s going to take a while. Just getting in here is tough. Getting out of here is tough. Some people just wanting to sit it out because uh there is no easy way out of campus as it has been closed and as police as we’ve seen have been sweeping the grounds here. Uh so we’re going to change positions from where we are. We’ll bring you more, but uh toss back to the studio for now. All right, Andrew, thank you for that update. We have an important update that we want to bring you now. earlier. Uh this is NBC reporting that the university had confirmed that they had the suspect in custody. Now they are saying they do not have the suspect in custody. That may help explain why the the campus has been on lockdown, why they have not been allowing people in and out of the university. We can’t confirm that report, but we’re just that’s that’s the latest on the status of what they had reported earlier. And again, Charlie Kirk um reportedly shot in the neck while visiting UVU uh during his uh Prove Me Wrong tour. We understand he is in critical condition. We are um checking in with our new specialist that we have out there on campus. Let’s go ahead and check in with Jod Reosa right now. You are in one of the parking lots near where this event was taking place and had had a a chance to talk to some folks who were there and witnessed this. That is correct. In fact, we are still seeing such heavy traffic as everybody has mentioned before. Here is an egress right here. Pretty much every artery going in and out of campus is just packed. Um cuz right here it looks like oh maybe there’s a lull in traffic. Nope. You turn this way. I’m having Greg turn this way. And you have a whole line of traffic trying to exit. And parking lots right now I’m seeing they’re packed because of some students just wanting to kind of you know wait it out see what’s happening. Now let me point you to the direction students are telling us that in between these buildings. So you see on the right side there’s like these little pyramids on the top of that roof and then you see the building to the left. Well the venue was right between those buildings. We’re not able to go close at this point, but that just gives you a perspective as to where the venue was. And as you mentioned before, I do have two students. These are unique students in that they are high school students. Okay? They are at Cedar Valley in their senior year. They were just here on campus though to take a test. So, I’m here with Ryder Warner and Kylie Stuffer. Okay. Ryder, let’s start with you. tell us like what was going on cuz you were there at the venue when it first happened. Yes, ma’am. We were driving past it. So, when we passed it, obviously you have all the news cameras, all the cameras pointing towards them, all the students rushing in to go and see what’s going on. So, we got to witness that and uh you know, just normal talk by Charlie Kirk. It was kind of cool to see Charlie Kirk here. You know, we watch him on TV a lot. Uh watch his clips a lot on YouTube, whatnot. So, it was cool to see that. Um I was in a rush for a test, so I didn’t get to stop and see, but I did get to see the venue. It was super pretty. Whole student body was there. It was super pretty to see. Um got here and it seemed like everything was in chaos. They uh were super hesitant about letting us test. Before we get to the test though, I want to just take us back to where you were in the venue because you said you actually witnessed the shooting. Mhm. Yeah. So, when they shot it was uh I wasn’t actually there. I just saw it afterwards. The aftermath uh the cops rushing up, the helicopters flying in. Um I just saw videos afterwards. It was probably 2 minutes after I left that I actually got to see what happened. Um, so and you got video from a student, another student, cuz you said it was very gruesome. What do you mean by that? Yes, ma’am. Um, the video I had showed the side camera of it. So, it was him getting shot in the neck and you can just see his neck go limp and all the blood come out. Um, stuff like that. Super gruesome scene. Um, I’m super glad I didn’t see it in person. Did you at that moment did you go to um, you know, like what is going on? I mean, what were you thinking at that point? Definitely panic mode. Um, as soon as I saw that, I knew, well, I’m here on campus. I don’t think they’re going to let us test. And sure enough, they didn’t. Obviously, super panicked. Um, I felt for him, you know, watching him for years. Um, I definitely felt a little bit of sorrow for his family, too. Um, but yeah, state of panic and definitely just a little bit hurt for him and his family. He is a dad of two kids. Now, it’s unique being that you’re in high school and you watch Charlie Kirk. You know, you said that your dad and grandpa watch him and you last night you were watching a YouTube video. Is that right? And you didn’t even know he was going to be here. I didn’t even know he was going to be here. He uh popped up on my for you page on Tik Tok and I was just scrolling through and I love watching his debates. Um especially as somebody who’s big into English, I was watching his debates and learning how he argues and uh I actually definitely base a lot of what he does into my own life, which is big for me, you know, being a student, especially being in an English class. Now, does he ever talk about violence or is it maybe you mentioned he was more Christian based and so this seems just out of the ordinary? It is absolutely out of the ordinary. I can’t believe that this even happened. He never talks about violence. You know, it’s not something he’s big into. He’s just into the argumentative side. Um he loves getting other people’s perspectives. Um he definitely can get under people’s skin just because in like any argument, you know, you’re arguing against somebody or against what they’re saying. And uh I guess that just got to him and somebody finally decided to act on it. Wow. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Ryder, we’re gonna be back with Kylie a little bit later, but we’re going to throw it back to you. Jody Renosa reporting live from UVU. Again, if you are just joining us, breaking news. Charlie Kirk shot there on the UVU campus as part of his comeback tour. We understand that as he was speaking here at Utah Valley University today, he was also scheduled to bring his American Comeback Tour to Utah State University and that was going to be held on September 30th, so the end of this month. He was going to make several stops. Dean, yeah, we’re getting a word of a Utah based uh it’s a change.org petition that basically would keep him from coming and these are based at Utah State University where he was scheduled to come later this month. The petition had 3,500 signatures. Um students, uh hundreds reportedly today are joining on that petition to ask board trustees at the university to prevent um this Charlie Kirk from coming to their campus. And it’s part of a national debate over controversial speakers coming on college campuses um and university’s role in balancing the freedom of speech and them hearing these speakers versus protecting the safety of students. And as we just heard from um several folks, you know, they wanted to come out. This is um what attracts them to Charlie Kirk because they’re able to have this type of dialogue on college campuses. Of course, it does come with some controversy. We do want to check back in with Daniel Woodruff, who is also there on campus. And Daniel, you’ve had a chance to talk to people there about some of the sights and sounds that they saw. Um in talking to some bystanders earlier today, they talked about a very calm event moments before before they heard a shot. Yeah, in fact, I’m joined by two more Utah Valley University students who told me that they were some of the first actually to morning for this event, Logan and Raleigh here. Logan, we’ll start with you. What uh kind of set the scene for me. What was it like this morning when you got here? And then tell me what happened. Yeah, we arrived I want to say an hour and a half before everything went on and there’s a couple hundred people here, pretty chill. But then as things went on, people just gathered. I would say there’s thousands of people here. Um, and in my we thought things were just a little unsecure. We thought, you know, in terms of security getting in. Yeah, security getting in. There weren’t a lot of officers around, police officers. So, we just thought things I don’t know, just it didn’t seem right from the beginning in my opinion. Raleigh, as you uh were there, what did you notice as the crowd was kind of settling in and and who was there? Yeah, so we were all there. We were having a good time. Excited to see Charlie. Um the majority of us were uh of course we support Charlie and there’s a group of other people that were kind of antagonizing us um up on this bridge up here and I don’t know there’s definitely some kind of bad feelings towards each other but um we didn’t think much of it like we thought it was the security was a little bit off like there wasn’t many people looking around to see if anything suspicious was going on but I would I don’t know it was it was A it’s a tragic thing that happened and really sad and I don’t really wish that on anybody. And Raleigh when it happened where were you and what did you see or hear? Yeah. So me and Logan and my a couple other my buddies we were I don’t know 15 ft away from Charlie give or take like five back. Maybe five years back and all of a sudden is after the first questionnaire the person asked a question the second guy walked up he started saying something and then we just heard a pop. It sounded like a firework, but it just echoed around. No one like really knew what was going on and everyone kind of just got stunned for like three seconds and then everybody’s dog piled on top of everybody trying to get low to the ground. Mass chaos and it was pretty scary. Um, everybody was like freaking out trying to find the people they’re with, make sure they’re safe. We didn’t know if there was going to be more shots fired or anything. We were like, “Yeah, I had no idea.” Logan, did you were you watching the stage where Charlie was speaking when he was shot? Yeah. So, I actually saw it happen and it was really disturbing. You know, he fell back and we all dropped. He was rushed off and then we all just ran towards this way like through that bridge under there. So, yeah, it was just really disturbing, hard to watch. You know, we know that this event had attracted some controversy with the petition to try to cancel it, but as you were here and as the event began, I mean, I imagine that it felt like you were surrounded by people who were like-minded or who at least supported him being here to speak. Yeah, I would say majority of the crowd was for him. You know, there was a lot of chance going on. A lot of the people were for Charlie. There were some people in the back that were, you know, against him, but I would say majority were for him. And as you’ve processed what happened, I mean, it’s it’s been now, I guess, a couple of hours. don’t even know what time it is, but uh what’s been going through your mind is you’ve just sort of been replaying what you watched. Just I’m I’m lost for words. I don’t know. It’s something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. That’s for sure. It’s Yeah. I don’t know. What are your thoughts? Um obviously super sad and tragic. And I think it’s sad that we can’t even have a civil conversation anymore. It just turns into stuff like this. Like he has an open mic. Like if you disagree with them, come talk to him. But apparently that’s not what some people want to do and they want to just have violence and and lash out instead of talking through things. And we love Charlie. We hope he’s okay. We we’re praying for him and yeah, we hope everything’s all right. And in terms of engaging with him, that’s as I understand the point of the tour, correct? Is that he’ll answer questions and that it’s a back and forth engagement. That’s exactly right. So if you disagree with him, he he welcomes you up and he’ll he’ll try to be respectful. some people aren’t respectful to him and he kind of gets heated sometimes, but he’s open to discuss things with you and he he’s uh he tries to keep an open mind. So, I just think it’s sad that other people won’t give him the same kind of courtesy. Well, you guys are students here. You’re from Utah County. Any final thoughts you’d like to share? Just prayers out to Charlie and his family and stay safe. Yeah. Well, Logan and Raleigh, I appreciate it. Thank you for spending a few minutes. Thank you. So, some more perspectives here from the west side of the Utah Valley University campus. And the campus is closed now as a result of this shooting for the rest of the day. No classes are being held. I did want to note that I got an alert from BYU, which is uh not too many miles from here in Provo. They sent out an alert noting that their campus remains open, but that they do have increased security and police presence as a result of what happened here at neighboring Utah Valley University. So, a lot of surrounding institutions and organizations are closely watching what’s happened and uh waiting for more information. Obviously, a lot is still unknown right now, but you heard from these witnesses what they saw, what they heard as they were just behind me here where the event was taking place. The tent where Charlie Kirk was speaking is literally a few yards away from where we’re standing right now on the west side of UVU. Back to you. Yeah, Daniel, that was some really stark testimony and things that they witnessed today. You know, I just I had another thought as we were seeing the video from Chopper 5 of those bleachers, an event that had been full just moments before and was now, you see, littered with with backpacks and with water bottles. And it’s just it’s a a hard contrast to see an event where people are having open discourse to one where they obviously fled in fear and just left everything behind. That that was a I don’t know. It’s very telling, isn’t it? It is. It says a lot just by what’s left behind. And we’ve been hearing accounts um all afternoon long from our new specialists that out there on campus. We want to check back in with Dan Rasone. And Dan, you have been speaking to so many people there that they’re just willing to share their insights and what they saw. Some describing it as traumatic and something they’re never going to forget. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Boy, these stories that we’re hearing out here on campus are just pretty incredible right now. But we’re about 2 hours after the shooting here. Things are finally starting to clear up out here. That’s UV UCCcu Center there just over here. So, we’re on the north side of it. And as you could see, the traffic right now beginning to clear up. It’s pretty much uh opened up right around in this area also. So, it’s finally starting to kind of get that congestion out of the way here. But, we’re going to bring in Gordon Ramsay’s now. Gordon, you were actually there at the event also. We’ve been hearing a lot of stories from people that were there at the event. you were kind of behind the event and as far as like some windows were right there and then you were seeing what did you see exactly from that your vantage point? So like you said I was like in the Hall of Fame building I was behind the window when I heard a shots um I didn’t see where the shot came from of course um um when that shot happened everybody duck everybody from my um building duck down. I ducked down as well and like I got I when I well before I ducked down I got like a little uh glimpse at Charlie Kirk and there was blood all over his shoulder and on his left shoulder and that is pretty devastating to see. I wish I could unsee that but that was pretty traumatizing and stuff. We’ve heard a lot of that. Uh your reaction that something would happen like that right here at UVU. I mean this is obviously a very safe campus. A lot of good students here, a lot of good people. Your reaction? Yeah, let know. Like you said, like there’s a lot of good um people like friends, professors. This is this is UV is a place for you and like so far like it’s been an awesome experience for something that to happen. It’s just really devastating and I can’t believe it happened right here. Kind of describe a little bit of the chaos there is what we heard as far as people kind of running and and and kind of getting out of the way there. I mean, there’s some shock there, but tell us kind of what you saw when people started to kind of get out of the way. So, yeah, when I saw the one, like after the shot, everybody from the courtyard starting running away ray, everybody from my building started running away ray, but me like I was like a later shot. So, I couldn’t really move. So, I was just standing in one spot, you know, ducking my head down for some reason. I don’t know why I didn’t run away. I was just like, “Oh my goodness, is this really happening?” Um, so at first I was like, is this really happening? And yeah, so then like after like everybody was cleared out, I finally got up and look at the aftermath and it was pretty devastating. And tell me a little bit about coming back to school. Now, of course, campus is closed right now. Your thoughts about coming back to school? Is that going to be a little traumatic? I mean, for me, it won’t be dramatic. It’ll just be like another day, another like life. Uh I mean, yeah. Did it dramatize me? Yeah, but like I’m not going to think about it too much. Of course, like will it dramatize me for life forever? Yeah, it will. But you know, all this is like keeping the keeping positive um having positive minds and like having like Jesus and God on your side. So, but like for other students, they’re probably traumatized to come back here. I can’t imagine what other students have to go through, especially something similar to Mayans. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate that. That’s Gordon Ramsey just joining us here on campus. Again, we’re hearing a lot of the same kind of stories here. A lot of trauma here as far as these students are concerned. A lot of shock, a lot of disbelief that something like that would just happen right there in the middle of the day. It seemed like a very safe uh venue. It seemed like a very safe area, of course, and then to have something like that happen and to witness something like that. And not only did they witness it, but it was very traumatic as far as what they witnessed. You know, to be able to see someone actually get hit with a bullet, blood coming out, and then that person dropping to the ground. So, everybody out here, a lot of people saying that are praying for Charlie, hoping that he will be able to recover right now. But again, uh campus is finally starting to clear out out in this area. Again, as we mentioned, just on the north side here of the UCCCU Center Arena. And uh boy, traffic is really kind of moving forward finally, but it took a couple of hours to be able to get everybody out of here, but man, it was quite the traffic jam. A lot of police presence still out here in this area. We’ll send it back to you. All right, Dan Rasone reporting live from UVU campus. Thank you, Dan. One thing I’m seeing on social media here just in the last half hour, UVU has uh put on um Twitter, not Twitter X, that um campus is closed, classes canled. We knew that, but they’re still calling on people who are on campus to shelter in place. Um, you know, that so that that coincides, you know, with information that we’ve learned that the university has now said they do not have a suspect in custody. So, just keeping you up to date. We we can’t confirm the suspect of the the confir the the status of the suspect, but within the last half hour, the university is still urging people to secure in place until police officers can escort you safely off campus. Let’s go now to Alex Cabrero who has been on campus. Alex, what are you hearing out there in your vantage point now? Yeah, we made it a little further onto campus from where the parking lot was and you just mentioned that uh police are asking those still inside the school to shelter in place until an officer can maybe escort them to a parking lot or to their car. And that’s what we’ve seen a little bit here and there. A lot of police officers here near the UCCC center. And then right behind us over here, I mean, there are several police officers from all sorts of different agencies, not only in uh Utah County, but I’ve noticed a few from outside of Utah County as well, just all helping to be a part of this. And just a few seconds, oh yeah, up there you can see the DPS helicopter, Department of Public Safety uh up in the air as well. Now, one thing hearing that maybe a suspect is not in custody at this point. Originally we were hearing that there was a suspect in custody and it kind of let a lot of people here on campus that we saw students leaving the area maybe think a little bit like okay let’s just leave everything’s okay but now hearing that a suspect may not be in custody. It’s kind of amped things up just a little bit again with students as they’re saying is it’s safe to get out of here. And last we heard again that if you are in a building right now shelter in place and wait for a police officer to come get you. But as you can see I mean just the parking lot here was definitely full a little while ago. Still a lot of cars here from those that are sheltering in place and such like that, but uh just waiting now to get the official word that it might be okay to come out. And here you can see a police officer right here armed and just making sure everything is tiptop on this end before maybe letting some students that are still in the building uh out of the building. So, we’ll continue to stay here. In fact, I was just chatting with an employee, a source of mine, somebody that I’ve known for a few years, saying that they were inside their offices right back in here. they were brought to the baseball field and now they have been moved from the baseball field as they still try to figure out exactly what’s going on with the suspect uh and everything about safety on that sort of thing. So again, we’ll continue to stay here. We’ll walk around, chat with some more people and try to update you with more information as it becomes available. Thank you so much, Alex Cabrera reporting live from us from UVU campus and just want to bring your attention to the screen here. We were just looking at chopper video there and we had just mentioned that Utah Valley University had sent out a post on X reminding folks that the campus is closed right now. Classes have since been cancelled and as we’ve been talking about our talking to our reporters, um there’s still people trickling in, but as you can see from the Chopper 5 footage here, we did see what appeared to be law enforcement going to into going doortodoor from building to building. And that coincides with that UVU has posted on X. They are making sure that the campus is secure. They’re going building to building. If you are on campus, they are escorting people safely off campus. They’re just reminding people to please clear out the campus again because UVU had reported just within minutes that they do not have a suspect in custody. So, this is going to be something that they’re actively pursuing right now as we’re showing you that Chopper 5 footage where police are going, they are going building to building. They’re going to be escorting people off campus, making sure that the campus is safe and secure. Let’s go now to Mike Hedrickk who is on the UVU campus. So Mike, just within the last few minutes, you UVU is calling this an unfolding situation. We’re still seeing officers going in. What can you tell us from what you’re seeing? Yeah, as officers are going in, everyone else is coming out. So you look in the parking lot right here. This is the main entrance of UVU where that roundabout is and it gets pretty busy during school time. I have never seen this many emergency vehicles in one spot at one time. It’s incredible. An Auburn car uh is behind me as well. You have SWAT multiple SWAT agencies that are here. So again, when you look at all these flashing lights, all these emergency vehicles, if there’s any question how seriously they’re taking us, that’s it right there. And so I’ve spoken to a number of students who were here on campus. As Alex talked about a little bit earlier, uh, as they go inside these buildings here, room by room clearing things out. They’re not letting anyone in. We have one student that I overheard trying. She was trying to get inside there and get her laptop. They’re like, “Sorry, give me your name and number. We can get that to you later.” But now’s not the time to do so. So, right now, they’re clearing everything out. I’ll tell you, I parked about a mile or so away. That’s how far I had to be away. and then order to walk all the way in here. And again, here we are 2 hours after this shooting. You still have this police presence and you still have the traffic that you do of people just trying to get out of here. Again, uh Alex commented on the investigative part of this. We’re still in the early moments of this. As you know, even a couple hours in, it’s still early. They’re still trying to gather what information. They’re just trying to make sure everyone is safe at this point. And I think once everyone is considered to be safe and there doesn’t appear to be any further threats in the area, that’s when they’re going to come out. That’s where they’re going to discuss and tell us what they know so far. I spoke with one individual actually [Music] This is an NBC News special report. Here’s Tom Yamas. We are coming on the air with breaking news right now and an update on conservative activist Charlie Kirk. President Trump says that Kirk has died after he was shot from a nearby building about 200 yards away while he was speaking at Utah Valley University. Here is the Trump the president has just put out. I want to put this up. He posted it on Truth Social. He writes, “The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me. And now he is no longer with us. Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erica and family. Charlie, we love you.” This is also important. The school is now saying there is no suspect in custody after they previously said that one was. Charlie Kirk, as you see here, was speaking at Utah Valley University earlier this afternoon. He had just started to take questions to debate some of the people who had come to watch him speak in this amphitheater. There were thousands of people there. Within a few minutes of him answering the second question, eyewitnesses heard a gunshot and then say they saw him recoil back, blood coming out of his neck or his chest. Thousands of people there. Everyone duck down and then started to run out and scramble. It is unclear exactly who shot Charlie Kirk, but if you are not familiar with him, he has become a very powerful person on the right when it comes to the political spectrum. He started Turning Point USA, which is uh an organization that has supported President Trump in both his campaigns is all three of his campaigns, I should say. And and Charlie himself spoke at both Republican conventions. a very young activist who’s gotten so popular with podcasting on social media, a massive presence. And one of the things he does is he goes to college campuses and you see it right here under the tent. Prove me wrong, prove me wrong. He asked to debate college kids across the country. Obviously, he comes from a conservative side. He is a staunch supporter of President Trump. He worked with the president’s son, Don Jr., and has carried the MAGA mantle all across the country and through various campaigns and has become really one of the most powerful non-elected people in the Republican party. I want to bring in our chief justice and national affairs correspondent Kelly O’Donnell. And Kelly, just earlier, I think this year, Charlie Kirk was speaking with California’s Governor, Gavin Newsome, on the podcast. People from across the aisle today saying they are praying for Charlie Kirk. And this is stunning for so many reasons, but yet another political assassination in America. Our nation’s history has been stained by the blood of assassinations generation by generation, infrequent and yet when it happens, it is obviously a wrenching issue that often brings people across the political spectrum together. Charlie Kirk was a provocator. He was someone who was fully engaged in all the modern tools of how you talk about politics and ideas in the United States. he did uh challenge his sort of political adversaries and those who were new to politics or those interested in politics to debate him. That was a core part of his political identity. He worked aggressively to galvanize young supporters, especially young white men in the column for Donald Trump as a candidate and then returning to the White House. His access as a young man, 31 years old, to the president himself, the vice president, put him in an extraordinary category of the modern political influencer. Uh perhaps at no time in our country have we had someone who could come through uh not holding elective office, not having the traditional pathway and yet carved out a voice and identity that of course brought many people along to his views but also because of the nature of politics there were many who vigorously opposed his ideas. uh many traditional ideas, ideas that were often challenging to uh the political cultural divides that are in the United States. Also notable, Tom, is that it is incredibly rare that the president of the United States would make a death announcement like this. Typically, we learn from law enforcement. We do so after we know all family members have been notified. Uh this speaks to the direct personal relationship between President Trump, his team, and uh Charlie Kirk, uh his wife, uh family, and so forth. So, we have not yet had official confirmation beyond the president. As far as I know, in the moments I’ve been waiting to speak with you here, we’ve been reaching out to the highest levels of law enforcement. Also incredibly notable, at this point, we are not aware of any suspect being detained. uh when you saw the scene and the video that you showed gave us a sense of a very crowded campus environment. A tent largely for sun protection, not for security protection, but that would of course uh diminish some of the lines of sight uh would give some ideas about where they might have been able uh to try to learn more about where did the gunshot come from, what direction, what are they learning. Uh as we know, there was an older gentleman who was taken into custody. apparently not at not related to uh the violence itself, but this kind of thing happens at these chaotic events where police are trying to sweep up uh any kind of witnesses, information, people who might uh be able to help fill in the picture. So, major questions remain. Who is responsible? Uh were there uh a person or persons involved? What were the motivations? All of that yet to be identified. We have been in a season of political violence, Tom. In Minnesota, we saw the lawmakers uh at the state legislative level uh who were killed along with a spouse, another lawmaker wounded uh along with a spouse. And we have seen these attempts including on the life of President Trump. That is notable. uh separately and unrelated, the trial is uh beginning, the jury selection phase for one of the asalants uh Ryan Ruth in the Florida case uh involving an attempt on the life of President Trump and then of course the Butler case where the president was injured but others uh were killed and severely injured. So in the case of Charlie Kirk, what what a remarkable and tragic moment in our political life uh that someone who engaged, exercised his democratic rights uh both encouraged and provoked uh those to share ideas and violence has apparently taken his life according to President Trump. Tom. Yeah. You know, Kelly, we have covered politics, you and I, for a while now. And and I don’t know if we have seen, as you described it, a season of political violence like this, starting in Butler with the assassination attempt on President Trump that came so very close just inches away, as we all saw in the photos and the video, and as the president has described, a second assassination attempt on his life. What happened just recently in Minnesota with those lawmakers assassinated literally on their front doorstep. And now you have Charlie Kirk who was never elected, never held office, a political activist, a young man now shot in cold blood in front of a very friendly crowd from the eyewitnesses we have spoken to. I in a very sick type of irony. Charlie’s group was called Turning Point because he thought there was a turning point now in in in politics with President Trump and where the Republican party had gone. And Kelly, you wonder if now in his death there may be a turning point when it comes to politics in this country. I mean, how will political activists, any type of political speech now happen in America, right, when you have something like this happen in a place where where someone thought he was speaking to a friendly crowd? Well, certainly it was a a largely friendly crowd. I mean, Utah, which is certainly conservative, a university based, the kind of uh sort of uh group of followers who would know who Charlie Kirk is right off the bat, a figure who lived on their phones and in their social media, ever present in those ways. We have seen over time when there are these wrenching moments of political violence, there are waves of what happens initially. There is the shock, there is bipartisan or across the spectrum condemnation of political violence. There are inevitably questions about the availability of guns and questions of security. Obviously, our elected senior leaders have intense security around them, but on a campus, a political actor like Charlie Kirk, you would have basic security, local law enforcement, campus police, that kind of thing. You would not have the kind of screening that would prevent weapons. We’re also talking about an outdoor event where you could have uh long range uh kind of ability to assess a situation on the part of a gunman or gunwoman, a shooter. Uh and so there are so many questions to be filled out, but I think there will certainly be a moment to again address what is the place of violence? Are our politics so poisonous that people cannot control the impulse to act out? Those are societal issues. Uh right now we’re still in the early fact gathering. There’ll be a period of uh acknowledging his life, those who will grieve his memory. And then what are the next steps? Yeah, Kelly, stand by for us. I want to bring in former White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley, a friend of Charlie Kirk who was just texting with him yesterday and he was on the House floor moments ago during a moment of silence. Hogan, first I am so sorry for your loss. You knew Charlie. Talk to me about what you remember about him and and and what this moment means right now. is so incredibly sad for those people that were close to Charlie Kirk. Yeah, thanks Tom for having me. I I I just I remember working in the first Trump administration of the White House and Charlie would come by and we would all kind of look and say, “Who is this kid? What does he think he’s doing? He’s so he’s so ambitious and he’s so he’s so uh talented at this young age.” And um we we all kind of gravitated toward him. watched what he was doing with the youth across this country. Not afraid to go into hostile areas and have um a debate over ideas, no violence, um no no uh uh you know altercations other than verbal uh because that’s what the country is all about. Disagreeing and and he he built a brand. He built an entity. He built a movement based on the ability to come together and have these sensible, honest conversations with statistics, with data. And just watching him do that, uh, it was just awe inspiring for someone like me who’s been in this movement for such a long time. And to watch him at such a young age, be able to capture the hearts and minds of so many across the country really was was a blessing to me. I will tell you, we were texting just the other day as you mentioned. He was supposed to go speak at my alma mater at the end of October at Miss University of Mississippi in Oxford. And I told him I saw that he was coming and he he knew I went there. He said, “Oh, you have to come to that. We’re going to have a great time.” And so I was trying to plan a trip down to Oxford to be with him. Um and now this happens today. and and I just I I’m I’m I’m I’m so sad to think of his wife and his children uh who were left behind after this uh tragedy, but I’m also filled with rage uh to think someone um would do something like this simply for disagreeing with somebody politically. We don’t know the motivations yet, but obviously they didn’t like Charlie, but there is no place for political violence in this country. this shooter is is is grotesque, is vile, um is a disgusting person. And um and uh you know, as as Kelly said, as you said, we’re going to wait and see more information as it comes out, but uh right now, I think a lot of people are in shock, a lot of people are angry, a lot of people are sad um at what just occurred. Hogan, you know, you can never get in the mind of of somebody who would want to assassinate a political figure, a public figure, right? Likely they have some type of issues. What was it you think about Charlie that would compel someone to do this in the sense that he like I said to to to Kelly, he was not elected. He had never held political office, but he had uh a huge platform, millions of followers on social media, but he’s not a household name. If you’re not really into politics, you likely don’t know who Charlie Kirk is. And maybe even if you’re not into Republican politics, you have never heard of him. We know him because we work in this space. You work with him closely, as you had said. But but what do you think it was about Charlie that would have prompted somebody to do something as violent as violent as this? Well, there is nothing about Charlie that would should or or or could push somebody to do something like this. That is unacceptable. Regardless of your thoughts of his policies or his positions, there is no excuse. There is no reason. There is no rationale for this behavior in any form or fashion. I don’t care what Charlie Kirk said, what he did. No excuse for this uh at all. And what is so frustrating is as the tensions in this country continue to get ratcheted up, you brought this up at the beginning of the segment. We had a former uh president, a candidate um dodge a bullet in in in reality. Um was shot in the year and then another assassination attempt was foiled and now we have someone like Charlie Kirk uh as well. You mentioned not elected. True. Um, but someone who just wanted to go on these college campuses and as they used to be places we could share ideas and debate ideas, it seems like they’ve come pet become petri dishes or or cesspools for for silencing and censoring um voices that differ with your opinions. And so there is no reason for anyone to want to attack uh uh Charlie Kurt. There is no reason that is that is legitimate by any stretch of the imagination. We don’t know this person. We don’t know the motivation as you said. However, um this is this is just flatout evil. Yeah. Flatout evil. And and it speaks to sort of how large of a figure Charlie had become, if you will, Hogan. Right. He he had become someone who when we just see that video in Utah, thousands of people had shown up. We’ve spoken to eyewitnesses who were excited to be there to hear him speak. He had crowds like this all over the country and and he really was sort of an upstart. Correct. I mean, he started on his own little by little and then built this massive following. Absolutely. And any one of his many events in a given year were were were missed for so many youth across this country who are looking to get into politics, who were interested in conservative causes or ideology, wanting to learn more. Um they they they set a new bar uh a new high for for entertainment too. Uh not just someone getting up behind a podium and giving a speech, but but so much of this was showmanship as well, bringing in the youth vote. He had a massive impact on the election in in in um 2020. obviously one in 2024 as well, doing some incredible work in many key battleground states just from a mechanical standpoint, getting out the vote, uh doing the the the non-sexy parts of politics, the the roll up your sleeves, door knockocking, um you know, engaging with voters. This is what he understood. Um again, at such a young age, that’s how you get involved and that’s how you effectuate change. He he didn’t even hint at violence. didn’t didn’t hint at anything other than honest open debate and conversation. That’s why this is so tragic and that’s why this is so um hurtful to so many. I let I will just say this and I I would be remiss if I didn’t. Uh Charlie was a devout Christian. Uh he believed in the risen Lord and right now the people out there who are suffering and who are sad for him understand where he is and what he is doing. He is embraced by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And that that for many of us is going to be one of the things that gives us some sense of of um of comfort today. Yeah, we’ve seen that in a lot of the post from from both the defense secretary and and the vice president as well. Hogan, I do want to ask you, talk to me about the relationship he built with the Trump family and with the president. I know he worked with Don Jr. uh as an assistant and helped him out politically and then and then he also worked closely with the president. The president has acknowledged this and and Kelly acknowledged this as well. I mean it it it speaks to his relationship with the president a and also what he had built that the president of the United States, the leader of the free world announced his death to the public. Well, the president and Charlie were very close uh in large part because the president is about getting results. He is about um uh uh seeing uh the fruits of of of labor actually coming to to to work and and getting things done. And and Charlie provided that. He would always ask Charlie about the pulse of the young people in this country. What are you hearing? What are you seeing on the road and what makes Charlie so valuable to to the the MAGA movement, to conservatism, to the Trump family, to the Trump organization, uh the Trump administration and orbit is that he would tell them where he thought that they were missing it, where there are some problems, where to focus on um shifts in in strategy, if you will. He knew those things as it related to his area of expertise. And so when you’re running campaigns and you’re looking to try and mobilize and motivate and create movements out there across the country in different segments, Charlie had the pulse of so many youth across this country, people who who were yet to be able to vote from from an age standpoint, people who were just starting to vote and getting involved. And so that’s why they relied on him so much. what he has built and I know it’s going to live on uh is is you can’t overstate um how much he has been um important to this movement. Hogan, and how does this change sort of what happens in the way we we interact with people who work in politics, right? Because again like and I just want to hammer this point home. I mean Charlie Kirk was was not elected. I mean he was a huge conservative figure, but he is not somebody who had run for office. He just had a huge platform and he was the target of an assassin, right? And yet you work with people like Speaker Johnson who have to go out there and meet voters and and everybody else that runs for office and we’ve seen what kind of violent world it has become in our country now when someone like Charlie Kirk is killed in cold blood on a college campus. There is no no question this will send um shivers through the spines of many elected officials, many public figures um because you know we’re out giving speeches all the time. We’re out interacting with voters all the time. And I was just talking to someone on the floor who I had gone on the Trump uh bus tour with to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Ohio and and and Florida and and North Carolina and we were just saying how this could now happen at any moment in time and and and Kelly O’Donnell was pointing out there have been some questions concerns with members of Congress as well um about their safety and security and these things are being reported now but they’re also uh you know so many are not reported. the threats that these people receive. Um, again, no place for it. I would argue it’s disgusting. It’s completely against our our Judeo-Christian founding, our civil society, our very American way of life. But at the same time, uh, it’s a reality at this point and and I hate that it is. So, I think people out there are going to be quite concerned and maybe even reticent to get out on the on the political stage when it’s meant for open, honest debate and not violence. But but we’ve seen so much of this in in recent years uh including today, of course, and and it’s just got to stop. Yeah, it just has to stop. Yeah. Regardless of your political views, it is unAmerican. It has gotten too violent and now someone has died. Hogan, we thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend. I do want to bring in our our senior Washington correspondent, Hi Jackson. Hi, we cover politics day in day out. Who’s up? Who’s down? Something like this, it’s just so terrible. Someone who is out there who is passionate about one side and and shot while while just out there trying to trying to practice freedom of speech, what we have in this country. It’s it is I think shocking and stunning uh Tom, to so many people across the political spectrum. Uh and it it comes as we have seen an uptick and a growing concern about political violence in this country. If you look at simply what has happened just this summer alone, I know you’ve talked about the assassination attempts obviously against former president uh against current President Trump of course back when he was a former president running for office. But you look at just this summer you had the CDC shooting of course that happened just last month. You had in June a Republican congressman, a former uh Trump staffer in fact, says he was run off the road by somebody who threatened to kill him. You have, of course, the death of that Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband along with the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife in April. You had Governor Josh Shapiro and his family sleeping inside their home when it was set on fire at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. That is just the last couple of months, Tom. And and you are seeing now uh from Republicans, from Democrats, a condemnation of political violence uh that that defies the political spectrum here. And you are also seeing, I think, from so many people. I think Hogan spoke about this how close Charlie Kirk was how influential he was not just as a so-called influencer or a conservative activist but as a friend as a confidant to so many people who have now in this second Trump term attained the highest levels of power in this country despite his age just 31 years old he had uh gotten close to so many including the president the president’s son he was instrumental of course uh in being vocal in support of now vice president JD Vans and you You’re seeing this stunned reaction, Tom, uh across Democrats, across conservatives, uh to the death, uh of of Charlie Kirk, as we have learned tonight, from President Trump himself. Tom? Yeah. Hi, Jackson. Stand by for us. Joining us on the phone now is Taylor Dufur and Haley Birmingham. The married couple were at the event about 30 feet away from where Kirk was speaking. I know you guys join us now by phone here. Uh I’m sorry that you guys had to witness that. Uh, tell us what you remember seeing when you you heard that first gunshot. Hi, thank you. Excuse me. I’m sorry, guys. Are you there, Taylor and Haley? Yeah, we’re here. Yeah. Yeah, we’re here. Sorry. Again, um I don’t know if you were able to hear me. Tell us what you remember seeing. Did you hear the gunshot? Yeah, we did. Um, we had we heard the gunshot and people just started dropping and so um my wife my my biggest concern was getting her down and laying on top of her. I looked over and saw him as he was falling out of his chair and I saw the blood coming out of his his neck. Um, and it was just, you know, people panicking. Um, kind of chaos, but we were every everybody worked together. everybody kind of came together and was, you know, what can we do to help everybody and get everyone safe. Taylor, I don’t know if you if you heard, but the president announced that that Charlie Kirk has has passed away. Uh, knowing that you went there to to see this event and then and then kind of witnessing that. What are your thoughts tonight? Well, it’s just sad, honestly. It uh kind of it makes me angry. Um I I do get very angry about it. Um that somebody could have this much hate inside them as to want to take somebody out of this world. Um and you know it’s just sad as well because our world is so divided at the moment and I feel like people just need to get along and um you know he he was trying to help. He was incredible. Charlie’s freaking amazing. Our kids love him. Everyone around here loves him. you know, the crowd that was there. Everybody was so happy and fun and having so much such a good time. Um, you know, and that’s that’s the kind of people that he drew and for it to turn into what it did is just sad. Haley, what do you remember seeing or hearing when you were there with your husband? Um, I just remember the pop and everyone looking around questioning the same question and I was questioning if that could have been a real gun. kind of sounded like a louder version of a pop gun. And then there was like a more military stature looking man in front of us and he was pushing people down saying, “Everyone get down. Get down. That’s a that’s a gunshot.” And then the next thing you know is you’re just trying to look for your exits and he’s saying to stay down. But do you run? Do you stay down? Do you crawl? You don’t know what to do. Yeah. It’s terrifying. I’m sorry you guys had to go through that today when you just went to go, you know, hear somebody speak. When the when the gunshot rang out, they’re saying it was from 200 y away, which is pretty far away in in a different building. You know, for people that aren’t familiar from where this happened, you know, the the place where they’re saying the shot came from, is that somebody where they could have sort of been hidden u maybe incognito or just sort of covered and then gotten a shot off? Because I asked you this because they’re still looking for the suspect. Initially, they thought they had a suspect, but now they’re still looking for a suspect. So, there’s like a causeway, like a walkway from building to building, and there was a lot of people up top, and that would be where somebody probably could have been. It sounded in that area, and I don’t see how anyone in the crowd. It was everyone was shoulderto-shoulder. I don’t see how anyone would get away in a group like that if it was in the crowd. So, to me, it sounded about 60 feet away. I instantly looked to where I thought it was and it was I would say about 60 ft in about the more top area but middle of the crowd and I didn’t think it came from up top but with knowing that he hasn’t been caught yet he had to have been hiding. We’re living in some sort of very violent times whether it be mass shootings or these political assassinations and and assassination attempts. Did you guys know what you were witnessing when it happened or or was it all just so strange? Yeah, I think we knew instantly because we all everyone around us kind of stopped, looked at each other, wondered if it was real, and then dropped to the ground. And we kind of talked about it on our way there that he’s super brave to not have like a bulletproof proof glass in front of him. And not in Utah. No way. Utah’s respectful. Like that would never happen. So you even you even acknowledge that that that’s incredible that you guys acknowledged that because you thought, hey, what can happen the times that we’re living in and he’s out there speaking to these people and then this happens. Yes. We didn’t think that not in a million years it would happen, let alone in Utah. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s very sad. It’s angering. We we’ve got to come together and love each other and listen to each other. Like Charlie, he never he never yelled at anyone in anger or made them try and believe his opinions and his facts. It’s he challenges people to listen and learn. That’s what we need to do. Haley and Taylor, we thank you for for talking to us and again, I’m sorry you had witnessed that today. I want to bring in our national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent, Tom Winter. Tom, rightly so. When we were reporting this out, we mentioned that there was a person in custody that the school had said there was someone in custody. There were social media videos of of somebody that was uh being handcuffed. Uh NBC did not put that that image out cuz we had not verified it. Now, it turns out that that the suspect is still on the run. What do we know? That’s right, Tom. And in case anybody’s seen those photos online of somebody apparently put into handcuffs following the event, that is a person that according to the university is not the suspect and is not uh has not been arrested in connection with this uh incident. It is not uncommon and and you know I mentioned this to you right at the time. It is not uncommon uh in these incidents when you see the people fleeing there that we’re looking at on screen um in order for people to be put into custody if somebody says I think that person did it that that somebody might make a statement might say something and so that’s something where uh it is not uncommon to like I said see somebody uh be placed into custody. We’ve seen that with other shooting incidents, other attacks uh and then it turns out that that person had no connection to the event. As far as where the investigation stands now, we have been uh reaching out to the FBI and law enforcement officials in Utah. Still no confirmed information from them as far as who they might be looking for. Uh the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, uh putting out a statement just a while ago saying he just got off the phone with President Trump and working with the FBI and Utah law enforcement. They’re looking forward to bringing to justice the individual responsible for this tragedy. uh adding that he was obviously heartbroken and uh his concern for Charlie Kirk’s family. Uh this investigation now uh still hoping to get a briefing perhaps as soon as uh 6:00 p.m. Eastern time tonight from officials, though uh that has not yet been confirmed by them. Uh as far as who, if they know who, uh they are looking for. The university uh also initially put out that this shooting happened approximately 200 yards from the scene. You’re looking at the tent there. Uh you’re looking at the courtyard where this took place. Uh whether or not that is the exact distance or not, they would obviously need to confirm with uh shell casing or a weapon that was left behind or video uh that that person was there. We’ve been showing videos uh throughout the afternoon here, Tom, of this incident and is is typically uh the case uh whenever there is a shooting incident certainly that involves a fatality. we don’t show that moment of the shot being hit just out of respect for the individual, but also, you know, these things tend to inflame and incite uh these types of incidents in the future and certainly don’t want to contribute to what the shooter tried to do this afternoon. Uh the incident, as we saw the video of the injuries, you described them uh several moments ago, they appeared to be grave from the onset. Obviously, we now know uh Kirk was not able to survive this incident. uh the investigation as far as what will happen in in Utah. They’ll obviously focus on the video. Uh we know that from how many times we show surveillance video after these incident incidents occur. They’ll also look for any sort of license plate reader technology. If they have an idea of what vehicle might have been left behind, uh or a vehicle that they’re searching for, uh they can see where that vehicle might have been on interstates or on roads or in towns. That information is vital. That’s been incredibly helpful. We’ve seen so many instances just in the last 6 to9 months. I’m thinking of the person who uh set their Tesla on fire uh at the base of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas uh earlier this year. That case was as far as where that person came from in their background. Uh license plate readers were so critical to finding out that information and that’ll be potentially helpful here. If they can get a face on this person, certainly they can use facial recognition to be able to try and determine who this person is. Taking a step back here, uh you know, yesterday I was at a gathering of uh of law enforcement uh experts and officials uh is part of uh 9/11 voices uh and the voices center for resilience. They’re uh 911 family and they have a gathering uh typically around this time each year. You think of the enormity, Tom, of the security uh issues that we had following 911, which is of course tomorrow. It’ll be the 24th anniversary of that, what this country had to do to secure itself. Now, you’re looking at a situation uh that could be more difficult from a standpoint of resources. If we’re going to start having these targeted violent incidents involving corporations, involving CEOs, involving high-profile people like Kirk, you’re going to be in a situation here uh from a funding standpoint, from the amount of officers that you have available, uh the amount of weapons that you have in event, remember, even if nobody is allowed to bring a gun into an event, you have guns there by default because you have law enforcement there. So, uh, obviously that that’s always something that law enforcement considers in in deploying this. Uh, tomorrow, as I mentioned, 9/11, uh, we have the vice president in New York City, uh, for the, uh, ceremony at ground zero. Uh, there’s other travel throughout the day, including involving President Trump. And we have the United Nations General Assembly coming up in, uh, in just a couple weeks time here in New York City. Already, everybody on edge as far as protecting these political figures. And now as we’ve seen this expand to other individuals uh in the political space but also in the in the commercial space uh this is a real challenge here going forward and I don’t think people really understand perhaps just yet the frequency and tempo that has been uh alarmingly increasing here over the last nine months and is a situation Tom that I can tell you because I’ve been talking to them since shortly after this incident happened. Everybody in law enforcement who focuses on these types of things has been immediately paying attention to this incident uh because of uh because of what we’ve seen and I think everybody is very concerned at this hour. All right, Tom Winter, we thank you for that. If we still have Jim Kavanaaugh here, Jim, I do want to ask you a question about this manhunt. It has been a couple of hours now. There is no suspect in custody just yet, but it is still early that the gunman was able to get away in sort of the pandemonium after the assassination. How hard is it now for investigators? Well, it’s it’s tough, Thomas. A sniper attack, an assassin with a rifle uses that rifle. There’s two reasons. One is he can’t get close enough to his target. Like, for example, someone protected by the Secret Service or the Diplomatic Security Service. he can’t get close enough. Uh the second is he really wants to escape. Uh so when you are familiar with assassins and snipers, this is how they think. Um this this shot I’ve watched that video of Mr. Kirk being wounded over and over again. He’s wounded in the left front of his neck. It’s looks like maybe a hunting rifle, uh you know, 300 6, a 308 rifle. Uh it’s a large wound. immediately a large loss of blood. Um, and he’s in a bowl. I mean, his tent for his speaking arrangement is in a bowl. There’s there’s uh grass steps. You can see the people on your shot there as it elevates up. And if the assassin is in a position on the building, even one floor above that grassy section, he has a shot right down into the bowl. And when you’re on an elevated shot with a rifle and it’s probably a scope, uh, you know, that’s really not that difficult to shot. You don’t have to be any kind of a a trained sniper. And and and the person can get in and egress. There’s no robust security here. Get into the site and maybe shoot from a window or a roof or a hidden nook and break the rifle in half, put it in a duffel bag and escape. So, what I’d be looking for here, Tom, is is a rifle recovered because there may be no rifle recovered. Is there a cartridge recovered? There may be no cartridge recovered. If he fires from a bolt-action rifle, the cartridge does not even eject. So, once he folds the rifle down, he can escape. So, the fact that they don’t have someone in custody now makes me believe that the sniper planned his egress. And if you if you think about snipers past in history, and I’ve worked on a number of sniper cases, but look at Lee Harvey Oswald. He planned his escape. He got out of the building just luckily and uh cuz he was confronted in the building by a motor cop at gunpoint, but he got out of it with the superintendent and he made his way to his neighborhood where he killed the Dallas policeman, JD Tippet. James Earl Ray fired from a bathroom of a boarding house across the street from the Lraine Motel Lraine Motel when he killed Dr. King with a rifle as well and he escaped. So snipers want to escape. They want to get away and with no robust security there he could have got into a bathroom window top of a roof and like I say a nook and he had a shot on Mr. Kirk. that shot. When you look at the overall scene, Tom, from an aerial shot, if you look to the left of the tent, you will see there’s a lot of portions of the elevated building there. Uh, which is not a long shot. You know, we’re talking 200 yards, could be 150 yards, could be 220 yards, but with a a deer rifle setup, a scope is one shot. That was his purpose, and he made his escape. So, if there’s no rifle and no cartridge, you’re relying on the video. the video of the campus, you know, anything that might have been nearby. Yeah. Any witnesses, uh, that’s what’s going to be critical today. And local law enforcement and now the FBI, we know, are going to be on scene trying to hunt down this gunman. I do want to bring in Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker. Kristen, I understand you just spoke to the White House about what had happened to Charlie Kirk about this assassination, this horrific event that has happened on the campus of an American university. So Kristen, what is the White House saying? because Charlie Kirk had such a close relationship with both President Trump, the vice president, and the Trump children. Well, you’re absolutely right, Tom. And that’s basically what this White House official said. Everyone there is in a state of close relationship with Charlie Kirk and they just cannot believe that this has actually happened, that his life has been taken. He is a young father. as you were discussing with Hogan Gidley, they were all so impressed and energized by him and so they are just in a state of shock and now at the White House and of course the reaction is bipartisan. Tom, let me read you some of what we’re hearing from Gabby Gfords, of course, a victim of political violence herself, writing, “The murder of Charlie Kirk breaks my heart. My deepest sympathies are with his wife, two young children, and friends. Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence. Attacks against political or ideological opponents are cowardly and unamerican and must be universally condemned. And Tom, that’s basically the sentiment that we are hearing from Democrats and Republicans. House Speaker Mike Johnson saying simply, “This has to end.” Calling for a moment of silence. The question though, and you were discussing this with Kelly O’Donnell earlier, is what happens now? What can lawmakers do? What can we all do as a society to prevent these acts of political violence? Because they are increasing. The fact that you had these assassination attempts against President Trump when he was running for office. The fact that you have these assassinations of lawmakers in Minnesota has just rocked the political world. And what we are hearing is enough is enough. And you can see the grief. You can see the shock and the anguish in the face of these lawmakers. But the question, Tom, what comes next? What will they do about it? What can given how sharply divided this country is. But I do think that that’s where the conversation is going to go next. Kristen, it it also sort of changes how politicians and people like Charlie Kirk will share their message. Yes, there is social media. Yes, there are the airwaves. You can broadcast whatever you want these days, but part of politics is being able to press the flesh, being able to see into someone’s eyes, being able to hear them up close. That that’s what campaigns are really all about. It it it’s one of the the strengths many people will say that President Trump had, right? In in all three of his campaigns, he was out there campaigning a lot. And and one of Charlie Kirk’s strengths to his supporters was that he would go out there, he would debate anyone, but he would take the message across college campuses all over America. And and the and the thing I keep coming back to is that if somebody like Charlie Kirk, who again had a huge platform but never ran for office, he wasn’t elected. If he could become the target of of some sick, deranged individual, right? What does that say about everybody else out there that is working in politics right now that is trying to do something that is trying to make a change? And how will this change the way people campaign or speak in public? Well, Tom, it could have a real chilling effect. And I think you bring up a critical point which is that as you were speaking with the couple earlier there who were at the rally who witnessed this horrific incident, he did not have a bulletproof glass in front of him. Will that change? Remember that did change for President Trump when he was campaigning in this last cycle after the assassination attempts against him. So security will undoubtedly be in focus. But you’re right, this is a hallmark of our democracy, the ability to debate, to have these robust discussions, and Charlie Kirk liked to be in the center of it. That’s why he was someone who was respected by Democrats and Republicans. Tom, you had Governor Gavin Newsome appear on his podcast. And so the question becomes, how can these political events move forward in a more secure, safer way? And there you see the flag lowered at half staff at the White House. A really somber day uh in Washington and Utah and all across the country, Tom. Yeah, the president ordering that right there. You can see the flag at half staff. We also have a new statement from Turning Point USA. I want to put it up on the screen for our viewers here. It reads, “It is with a heavy heart that we confirm that Charles James Kirk has been murdered by a gunshot that took place during Turning Point USA’s The American Comeback Tour campus event at Utah Valley University on September 10th, 2025. May he be received into the merciful arms of our loving savior who suffered and died for Charlie. We ask that everyone keep his family and loved ones in your prayers. We ask that you please respect their privacy and dignity in this time. Uh, a very powerful statement there from TurningPoint USA. Tom Winter, I I understand, has some some new reporting. Our our national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent. We’ve been talking about what we know and what we don’t know. Initially, there was a suspect in custody. Then the school came back and said, “No, we don’t have a suspect in custody, but we we think the shot came from 200 yards away, which is a good distance.” There were thousands of people in the crowd, and they identified the building in the back where they think the shot came from. What else do we know, Tom? It is a good distance, Tom. But as our colleague Jim Kavanaaugh uh pointed out, I think very accurately so for somebody who has a uh even just a basic understanding of a semi-automatic rifle, uh this would not have been a particularly uh difficult shot to make, and it underscores uh obviously the tragedy of it. Obviously, Kirk didn’t see it coming. He did appear to have some security near him on stage, but uh this would have required what appears to be kind of more of a a response that we would see uh at a Secret Service event where you would have locked down the entire area, had high angle snipers, and would have had to put up a a perimeter which would have prohibited weapons uh from inside of it uh in order to be able to uh in order to be able to handle this. I I you know, they said that this the shots may have come from the low sea center. That that might in fact be true. there was a tent up which would have made it difficult uh to see Kirk. So without knowing that angle specifically uh that might uh raise questions as far as if that’s actually where the shot uh came from. But assuming the initial information is true uh as I mentioned it would not have been a difficult shot for whoever did this. Clearly did it in a way uh not to be initially detected as Jim alluded to uh and is now somebody who uh as of last reports uh appears to be on the run as you can imagine. Uh I keep glancing down because uh our phones are constantly buzzing here as we’re tracking down uh various uh pieces of information and trying to corroborate information. Uh but our latest reporting is that there is not an individual in custody that law enforcement is still uh looking for somebody. This is going to be Utah law enforcement investigation first. Certainly could have a federal nexus. The FBI according to its director Cash Patel is on scene. Tom. Yeah, Tom, before you go, it was a good point. If we if we bring that map back up, the point you make about where this gunman may or may not have been because if they were up on that roof, they would have been at an elevated point. Remember, the amphitheater was sunk down and they had that tent. So, of course, they’re going to be investigating this center as well, looking exactly where the gunman was posted and how they got away. And you got to think this area likely might not have been canvased because Charlie was not an elected official. Um, he was somebody who was coming there to talk. All right, Tom, thank you for that. This concludes this NBC News special report. We’re going to come back on the air again when officials in Utah hold a news conference. We’ll have more ahead tonight, of course, on Nightly News. I’m Tom Yamos. We thank you for watching. Yeah, totally fair. Yep. So, you’re just Go ahead. Charlie Kirk was one of the co-founders there. A spokesperson saying Kirk was quote murdered by a gunshot at Utah Valley University. We ask that everyone keep his family and loved ones in your prayers and we ask that you please respect their privacy and dignity in this time. We’re also seeing statements come out uh one from the Utah Commissioner of Higher Education. Of course, this happened on a college campus. So just uh again reemphasizing that uh there’s no place for violence on college campus and condemning that. We also saw a statement from the Utah Chiefs of Police talking about this outdoor event that his death was confirmed and that they are united against violence in all forms. Free speech and respectful political discourse are vital to ensure the health and vitality of our democracy. And I’m sure we will see many of these kinds of statements come out today as people process and take take inventory of of all that’s happened today. And Daniel Woodruff, he’s been kind of getting a sense of that as he’s been talking to people there at UVU campus. And I know your focus right now, Daniel, is the heavy police presence there. And you were kind of painting a picture of what you were seeing as far as uh police and tactical gear. Yeah, we’ve seen police. In fact, a little bit earlier on our air live, you saw some officers escorting a group of women out of the building that’s just to the south of where the shooting took place. The shooting happened right behind me here of on the west side of the campus. And I went over and I talked to the women. They didn’t want to speak on camera, but they told me that they had been sheltering in place for several hours. UVU had put out a phone number for people here on campus to call if they needed a police escort and so police went and escorted them to their cars. This campus evacuation literally is still going on then because the shooting according to UVU happened about 1210. We’re now about 3:30 and so people are still leaving campus, individuals who had been sheltering in place for the last couple of hours. As I spoke to the women, I asked them if they wanted to say anything. They didn’t want to again speak on camera, but they just said it’s incredibly sad. They wanted to get to their families and talk about uh that they are okay and they are safe. But they said their office overlooks the plaza where Charlie Kirk was shot and as we know now know he died from those injuries. And they said it was a loud gunshot. They heard it very clearly and uh the mayhem that ensued as people ran off of uh the campus after UVU told everyone to leave and of course after people heard the shots. So, we’re continuing to look over from the west here to the area where the shooting happened. A lot of people’s personal belongings are still there, and we see police officers right now walking around that area. I see at least one uniformed officer. I see another plane clothes. I don’t know what agency they’re from, but this is uh in pretty plain view of the west side of campus. and his speech today, his event where he took questions and an uh answered them from the audience was in plain sight. It was an outdoor event. We’ve actually heard from some students today who spoke with us earlier who said they were very critical of the fact that there was basically no security here that anyone could walk in, anyone with a backpack, you didn’t know what was inside. They wondered why there were no uh security checks of any kind prior to Charlie Kirk’s event getting underway. And it didn’t take very long through the event um cuz he was only as I understand on his second question for the shooting to happen. The somber mood here on campus is notable. I know we have a lot of police presence, but we’ve seen people here not leave campus. I know UVU’s been asking people to leave. There was a group over by the trees there a little bit ago. They’ve since left and uh one of our photojournalists approached them after we learned that Charlie Kirk had passed away and they were crying. uh they didn’t want to speak with us about it, but this is a very somber mood here on campus as the gravity of what’s happened is sinking in that Charlie Kirk was shot in open air here on a public university, a state university campus and ultimately died from his injuries. And we’ve talked with people today who were excited to hear from him and they were here early, they got good seats, they were up front and they saw him get shot, they tell me, in the neck and uh just the mayhem and chaos that ensued after that. So, as we are here on the west part of campus, other than that, it is fairly quiet. We see occasional law enforcement presence walking through. Again, we see occasional law enforcement presence in the area where the shooting actually happened and a lot of law enforcement over to our south where we’ve already had reports from Dan Rasone and Mike Hedrickk. But, uh, that’s kind of the mood here and UVU again is asking people if they’re still on campus, give them a call. They’ll have the police escort to get them off. Back to you. All right, Daniel. Yeah, you summed up some of the um people that you’ve seen there crying and and having some real emotional reactions and that’s a lot of the things that we are seeing here on social media and hearing people uh communicate is the shock, the sadness, even anger that this happened in Utah and um that this would happen on a on a campus on a college campus at a peaceful event that involved political dialogue. Um, and for that and many other reasons, some people have organized a vigil on campus. I mean, on not on campus, on at the Capitol tonight. It’s at 7 o’clock. It’s a vigil for Charlie Clerk Kirk at the Utah State Capital Rotunda. Um it’s hosted by the Utah House of Representatives so that um anyone can go and uh again have a chance to debrief, have a chance to express the emotions of the day. It’s been a heavy day and um there are a lot of people who are feeling that right now. Yeah. And we have certainly been getting a sense of that um from Alex Cabrera as well as our other reporters out there. But let’s go ahead and check back in with Alex. And I know the last time that we talked with you, Alex, so many um questions, not getting those answers right now, but you’re out there. You’re able to talk to people, just get a sense of what they’re going through right now with the passing of Charlie Kirk. You know, honestly, shock. They they can’t believe that it happened. You know, uh I I know shootings happen often in the United States. Um but they they shouldn’t and they shouldn’t happen like this, especially when there’s somebody just giving their their opinion, somebody debating, somebody who’s well known for traveling across the country doing these sorts of speeches and such. So, a lot of people came here that aren’t even students at Utah Valley just to hear some of that whether they agree or not, just to be part of somebody who, you know, well-known figure. And um and now for this to happen, there’s a lot of shock. Uh students continue to leave buildings. We see a lot of police officers here escorting those students out. We also see a lot of ambulances here with the city of Oram just on standby for what may be needed. They don’t know. But again, as I mentioned uh maybe 10 15 minutes ago, this is something that first responders, law enforcement officers, firefighters, medics, this is something that they train for. So having a response like that is what they train for. As well as this, if Mark, if you turn around and show just the number of police cars here that we’re dealing with. I unfortunately we’re good at this. You know what I mean? But but it’s also thank goodness that they do train for things like this law enforcement officers because when it happens for real, they are ready. There is a plan in place. There is a way to close the schools. There’s a way to get students out of the classrooms. There’s a way to screen students that are leaving the area. There’s a way to deal with traffic. And that’s what we’re seeing here now off of University Parkway is a lot of traffic. Even though I think most students and administrators have left the area now and been able to leave campus, there are a lot of people coming here to University Parkway just to see this. And I’ve seen a lot of people in their cars just taking pictures of the scene here on University Parkway going slow going by just because I think they’re in shock, too. They can’t believe that this happened here uh in Utah on campus to somebody uh well known like a Charlie Kirk. So, at this point, yeah, there are a lot of questions. The answers will eventually come. We may not like the answers. We may not uh want to hear the answers, but they will come at some point. And I think that press conference here is in about 20 minutes or so where we will start to get uh some of those answers and be able to ask some of those questions to administrators uh and people involved. Was there enough security? Uh what what was the plan if something was to go wrong? All those will be questions that will be asked and we will hear the answer to those questions. But now, honestly, it’s just a matter of uh worrying about Charlie Kirk’s family, those who know him, those who love them, and also the students who witnessed this. We interviewed quite a few students who heard the gunshots, hit the ground, started running, scared for their lives. Um, you know, they’ve all seen the videos. They’ve all seen the news stories in the past when somebody yo gun mass shooting active shooter on the loose and and it’s always something we see on the screen but to be involved with it to be in the middle of it uh a couple people told us they absolutely froze even though yesterday they would have told you I would immediately start running but a lot of people froze and I think that’s completely normal with some people because you just can’t believe it’s happening. One person told us they thought it was a a prank or a stunt or something that is part of the show. Uh and then when realized that no, this is indeed real. It it really hits home. The adrenaline hits you and a lot of people making it out. Now, the good news in all this is that we haven’t heard of a lot of injuries with with anybody else. Uh from everything we’ve heard is that people told us they only heard one single shot. We haven’t heard of any injuries as people were running away. But we may hear that we may hear that maybe some people were injured during the the mass fleeing of this general area. that will be a part of the press conference as well. But I think mainly the message right now is why, you know, and that’s, you know, I don’t mean to be flippant about it, but h how in Utah, you know, it’s it’s just one of those things that uh we’ve seen far too many of these types of incidents. And and and what is the answer? I don’t think anybody knows what the answer is at this point, but it’s it’s something that will continue to be talked about. And today it’s Utah’s turn for us to talk about it, for us to make sense of it, for us to talk to the people who were involved in this and who saw this and and when those answers come, we’ll we’ll we’ll see if something could be learned, if there’s something different that could be happen. But, you know, I got to be honest, something that we’ve heard from everybody else, from people on the right side, from people on the left side, is when can we all come together? And I think that’s something that uh at some point I think we’d all love to see that. It’s just a matter of how do we get there? The response, as expected, is a big one and uh it will continue to be a big one. I think just in the last few minutes, we notice more police officers showing up. So, as we continue to hang out here and get more information, we will pass it along to you knowing that that press conference here is in about 20 minutes. So, let’s send it back inside for now. Yeah, Alex, you you so well summed up uh the the emotions and the it’s the disbelief. Um it’s heartbreaking that this happened. Heartbreaking that it had to happen in Utah. There’s just it it it’s beyond hard to express how so many people feel that way um that this happened in our state. Um I wanted to read out we are expecting an update in just a few minutes. I wanted to read a statement from Lieutenant Cam Roden from the Utah Highway Patrol who uh regarding whether a suspect has been arrested. He said nothing is confirmed right now. Hopefully we will get an update on that particular question because that’s really the thing that is still outstanding is do they have someone in custody? Do is there still a threat on campus and the fact that they are still escorting people out and telling people not to leave until they have an escort? Um there does seem to be that issue of safety. We also want to mention that President Trump had announced that flags will be flown at half staff in honor of the death of Charlie Kirk through September 14th. So, we wanted to pass that along. Um, we are checking back in with our uh news specialist that we have there on campus. Let’s go back to Dan Rasone and uh find out a little bit more about where you’re at and what are you seeing right now. All right, Tamara. Well, we’re inside one of the auditoriums here on campus where a press conference is scheduled to take place in just a little bit. We’re saying it’s we’re being told right now it’s supposed to be about 4:00. You could see the media obviously setting up getting ready for this press conference, but a lot of what we’ve been talking about here as far as trying to get some answers. Has this suspect actually been caught? You know, what’s the latest on this investigation? What went wrong here? Those kind of answers we’re hoping to be able to get here shortly. It’s going to be pretty much a who’s who here in Utah, all the leaders. We’re going to have the governor here is what I’m being told. We’re going to have the FBI here. We’re going to have the Department of Public Safety top uh brass here also. So, there’s going to be a lot of different people that are going to be here, the main players as far as knowing what’s going on in this investigation. As we’ve been hearing all along, this is just devastating as to what happened here at UVU. Obviously, this is a campus that has been safe for the most part as far as any kind of activity like this or a shooting like this or anything that where you they’ve they have political people come here all the time. And so this is not unusual to be able to have different events, different things taking place on this campus and then to have something like this. Everybody is just in shock here. So again, we’re hoping to be able to have this press conference here at 4:00 inside of this auditorium here and hopefully be able to get some of those answers. But I’m being told from the FBI and also uh from um the governor’s office and also from the Department of Public Safety, all of those people are expected to be here. It’s just a matter of trying to get some of those individuals here. You saw some of the traffic outside. You saw where Mike Hedrickk is at and um Alex Cabrera and some of the others there with all those police activities outside the campus there. It’s a full house when it comes to police agencies and the number of officers here, the number of SWAT we’ve been seeing. Uh we showed you just a short time ago, we saw some of these SWAT members running, going in a different direction, racing down the street. We see them carrying all their gear as far as um you know, their rifles and everything else like that. And so, you know, there’s a little bit of that. So, we’re hoping to be able to get some of those answers maybe as to what happened there or why were officers rushing to get to a certain location or why were they off to that or that that location. But again, these officers combing the entire campus. We’ve been seeing that all along. We’ve been seeing officers and SWAT team members going basically from building to building, going inside, clearing them. Um, even for us to be able to get into this building, we had to go through security to be able to be here. And so, they’re very tight right now. All the doors are locked here on campus. Everybody, it’s pretty much shut down for the most part. But again, a press conference expected to take place here in the next uh 20 minutes or so, just behind me. And, um, we’ll of course bring that live to you as soon as we have that. and we’re hoping to be able to find some of these answers. The scary thing out there, of course, on everybody’s mind, if the shooter has still not been caught, where is he? Is he still on campus here or is he off somewhere else? Did he take off, flee the scene? Could it be another location? And so, there’s still a lot of weariness here and a lot of people just on edge in regards to, you know, what happened and then also what could happen if the shooter is still here on campus. We’ll send it back to you guys, but again, we’ll come live out here as soon as this press conference happens. All right, Dan, we’re glad you’re in the spot where you’ll get the information first. So, we will be checking back in as soon as we need to, as soon as they get started. I wanted to uh read, we just uh had a a statement issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Um they have issued a statement following the shooting of American political commentator Charlie Kirk. The statement reads in part that it is with great sadness that we learn of a shooting that took place at the Utah Valley University resulting in the death of Charlie Kirk. Our prayers go out to his family at this time. We condemn violence and lawless behavior. We also pray that we may treat one another with greater kindness, compassion, and goodness. For members of the church, we reaffirm reaffirm the Savior’s re teaching and ammunition is to love our neighbor. And again, we do want to stress that the White House has lowered its flags to half staff. Um, that was just within the hour or so where President Trump has made that statement. Also suggesting on True Social that all American flags throughout the country should be lowered at least through Sunday. Let’s check back in with Daniel Woodruff who was out there on the UVU campus. Um, you’ve been talking a little bit about the activity that you’ve been seeing around you and talking to folks. What can you tell us right now? Yeah, we’ve seen law enforcement here on the west side of campus because right behind me is where the shooting actually took place. We’ve also seen some law enforcement walking around in the area where spectators were sitting during Charlie Kirk’s speech when he was shot at about 12:10 this afternoon. And it’s been really, I think, compelling to hear from some of these people who were watching what they thought was an innocent political event, a safe event in the middle of a beautiful September day here in Utah County of all places when all of a sudden shots rang out. We want to hear what some of those witnesses had to tell us just a little bit earlier. Heard the gunshot. I was the last one standing because I couldn’t quite believe. I thought maybe it was a stunt and then everybody fell to the ground. We all fell to the ground. I got pushed into some bushes. I stayed there. There was a a lady with her elderly mom and I said, “Is she okay?” Everybody kind of just didn’t know what was going on at the moment. They were just sitting there like watching it like, “Oh, did he really?” I’m like, “Yo, dude, he got shot, dude. Get out of here now, dude.” Those were some of the witnesses. And really in in talking with one individual in particular really has stuck out to me. He was so close to the stage. He saw it exactly happen. He saw Charlie Kirk get shot as he put it in the neck and blood come out and just a really horrific scene to witness. These are tough details, but that’s what happened here at UVU. And then as they described it to me, they took off running. In fact, three people that I interviewed said that they ran through this fountain here behind me just to try to get to safety because at that point, nobody knew what was going on. They thought it was a firecracker. Some people thought it was part of the show. And it turned out that it was anything but that and Charlie Kirk was shot and later died from his injuries. I also wanted to make reference to the statement from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was read a little bit earlier. As we’ve been reporting on, President Russell M. Nelson of the church turned 101 years old yesterday. And as part of that, he released an op-ed in Time magazine. And actually in that he essentially called on his uh followers and others to on the followers of the of Jesus Christ and others to turn down the temperature to turn down the temperature online and such and nobody of course comes to an event like this expecting that there will be a shooting and I I think it was obviously a shock to everybody and people have echoed today what President Nelson has said and that is that differences of opinion of course are inevitable but we cannot allow it to become violent. We cannot allow ourselves to dehumanize each other. And that’s been very difficult for people here as I’ve talked to them today to think about that they came to an event on a public university campus and ended up running for their lives because they heard a shooting. They heard shots fired and Charlie Kirk, the speaker, the main event was shot and killed. So, a lot to process today. But it’s been interesting to talk to those who were there and they’ve had to share with me just what they have to now go through. that one woman, a UVU student, said she planned to go seek out a therapist in counseling because of how much she saw and what she’s trying to process now. She said she’d been crying for a long time and even an hour after the event when we talked to her, more than an hour, her heart was still racing. So, a lot to unpack here at UVU campus today. Back to you. We appreciate that, Daniel, with that update. And it is it’s so hard to watch this video because uh and you alluded to that as well to see the fear and the reaction from the the thousands of students that were there. U the just the the violence, the heartache. It just it’s it’s a it’s a flood of emotions as you see people scrambling here and it’s it’s really hard to watch and know that that happened in our backyard. That happened anywhere but that it happened here in Utah. Uh let’s go right now. Uh who have we got stand? Oh, we got Jody standing by. Jody, what have you been seeing when in your area? We’re expecting an update in about 10 minutes and there has been some police action on campus. There absolutely has been, Dei. They just keep flooding in more teams of SWAT. They keep going into each building. Right now, I am here just outside of the Fulton Library in between the Clark building and the liberal arts building. Now, just to give you a reference point, the liberal arts building, the venue where the shooting took place, it was just beyond the liberal arts building. Now, one of the things that Daniel Woodruff said totally reminds me of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His message last conference 6 months ago was to be a peacemaker. And so I think everybody is just very shaken here on campus and throughout the world knowing that this is the message that he disseminates to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It again was his 101st birthday yesterday and we’re coming up on another conference in October and I’m sure that line of thought is going to continue. Now I’m here with three young men. They came to see Charlie Kirk and the turn for the worst happened. Um I’m going to start with Nick. Nick actually was there in a middle row. Um, Nick, tell us a little bit about what happened. Tell us your last name first. Uh, Nick Call. Tell us exactly what happened, what you saw. So, uh, I was just watching him speak and he was talking about gang violence and then I just hear like a loud pop and I’m looking at him and it doesn’t even look real. Like it I’m only 18 years old. I’ve never experienced a lot of death in my life. But this is like the first time I’ve ever seen somebody die. And my heart was just racing. It was so scary. And I I was just appalled. Like everybody just drew flop to the floor and I just tried to do what everybody else was doing. It was It was really scary. Oh, that I can’t even imagine how scary that would be. When you did you drop to the ground as well? Were you waiting to see, you know, is there going to be another shooting? I mean, what was going through your mind? Yeah. I just I instantly just dropped to the floor. I didn’t know if he was a mass shooter, like he was there to shoot everybody there. But when I was on the floor, there were some group of people at the top, they cheered when he got shot. And I was just appalled. I couldn’t believe the lack of human life that some people have. the lack of empathy there. Oh, that that is just that’s appalling. I agree. Now, when you saw what you saw, did you have a certain direction that you heard the shot come from or did you think it was just one shooter? Yeah. So, I was facing towards him and it looked like the shot came from my left, so his right, and it just went through his neck and out the other side. It was It was gruesome. Now that we’re still trying to parse through information and we know that the shooter is at large, what are your thoughts now? I’m just I hope they catch this guy. Nobody deserves to die, no matter what your political beliefs are. And I just think that if you do something like this, you deserve to go to jail for life. Thank you for sharing. I’m going to move on now to Jack. We have two Jacks here. So, I’m going to start with you, Jack. What’s your last name? Jack Stevenson. And tell me, where were you? How did you hear about this? What are your thoughts now? Yeah. Um, so I was just kind of like on the middle left um farther away from Nick, but um yeah, I just heard about it through social media and um I came to hear Charlie Kirk speak just because I thought it would be interesting and um see what he had to say and um and yeah, so that’s why I came. So now in the aftermath, we’re trying to piece things together. What are your thoughts now? Just prayers for his family is honestly just what I’ve been thinking this whole time. Like Nick said, you know, no one deserves to die, especially with a wife and two young kids at home and all of his extended family. I cannot even imagine what they’re going through right now. Thank you so much, Jack. All right, Jack, what’s your last name? Uh, Watkins. Okay. You were there and you specifically came out to see Charlie, correct? What were your thoughts at the time? Well, so I was with Jack Stevenson here and we were kind of just like we should just go just like for fun just to see. We don’t really care like about Charlie Kirk, but like you know what I mean? Just go, you know, and just to be there like and like it was good. Like it was it was really fun, but just like it’s just crazy that chaos just happened so quickly. And I mean that’s kind of all I don’t know. Do you have second thoughts about going to something like this in the future? I mean I don’t know. Yeah, a little. like it’s pretty traumatizing, but I don’t know. I mean, this doesn’t really happen. Like, he’s been on he’s gone to colleges all over the world and it’s just crazy that it happened at my college, you know what I mean? Like, I just signed up to go here and just, you know, enrolled and I’m and it’s crazy to see that like the one thing that I go to, something has to happen and that’s it’s just horrible. But I don’t know. Thank you, gentlemen, for sharing your thoughts. So, as we just heard, a traumatic experience for them and for, you know, students here that they know and the fact that this shooter is at large is very, very scary. So, as we have information continue to unfold, we will let you know. I’ll send it back to you. It’s so unsettling to hear from those college students and that gentleman just 18 years old. I mean, a student who had just signed up. Jod, thank you for that report. Yeah. Um, okay. Again, we are waiting for an update in about 5 minutes. In the meantime, we have some updated information. Um, one, uh, let’s let’s check in with Sarah Martin who is at the Tempenogus Hospital. Um, let’s find out what information are you hearing there at the hospital. Sarah, right now, Tempenogus Regional Hospital. We believe, we don’t have this completely confirmed, but we believe this is where Charlie Kirk was taken after he was shot at UVU. heavy police presence here on the campus of Tenonogus Regional Hospital. The hospital in lockdown according to security personnel. All appointments for the day were cancelled after about 100 p.m. The hospital here turning away patrons unless it’s an absolute emergency, unless they’re arriving in an ambulance or in an emergency vehicle. Right now we do have a small group of supporters of Charlie Kirk who have gathered on the corner of Tempenogus Regional Hospital to show their support and to show that they are you know here and willing to support. And we have one supporter here is willing to chat with us. This is Matthew. Matthew, thanks for speaking with us. Thank you. Why are you here today? Why is this important to show up? Charlie has done so much for the for our nation, for America, for the youth, uh for the faith in America. And today feels like a Rubicon has been crossed by the left. And it’s uh it’s time for us to stand up for what we believe in like Charlie to take our liberty back and to really be the America that we’re supposed to be. And and we’re here to give support to Charlie and his family. um and all of his supporters and his staff and those that were here today and and those that have taken care of him. You’ve been here, it’s it’s pretty warm out here. You’ve been here in the sunshine for about an hour that we’ve been with you and we’ve seen a huge number of cars drive by and some very vocal. Has that been a positive experience for you so far? What have you seen? Mostly positive. There’s been some negative. um woman was filming us and she yelled out something derogatory to Charlie Kirk which is disgusting and we’re seeing more of that from the left. What we don’t see enough of is from the left is uh condemnation for what’s going on. Um just like this young girl in North Carolina that no one reported on for days. We’re we’re tired of it and we’re here to support America and stand up for what we believe in. Matthew Barry here to support. Show your support for Charlie Kirk. We’re so sorry for for the loss today. Any other final words? God bless America. God bless Charlie Kirk. We’ve seen firsthand a significant number of people shouting out in support and also against Charlie Kirk today. Lots of political division on the street corner here in front of the hospital where we believe he was treated and now confirmed that he has died. Reporting live from Tipponogus Regional Hospital, I’m Sarah Martin, KSL5. Sarah, thank you. And you, as you showed, people are wanting to show their support for Charlie Kirk for his family and wanting to condemn violence on behalf of Utons. There will be a chance to do that coming up tonight at 7:00. The House of Representatives is hosting a vigil for Charlie Kirk and for the events that happened today, 7:00 at the Capitol Rotunda. And we are showing you a live look now on the campus of Utah Valley University where they are lowering the American flag. As we had mentioned, President Trump had lowered the flag at the White House and has called on all states to do so through Sunday in honor of Charlie Kirk. 31-year-old Charlie Kirk who was shot dead at the campus of Utah Valley University. 31 years old, a political activist, a husband, a father. So many outpouring of support has been coming in. Uh Governor Spencer Caul earlier said on X that he is being briefed on the situation, posting in part, quote, “Those responsible will be held fully accountable. Violence has no place in our public life. Americans of every political persuasion must unite in condemning this act. Our prayers are with Charlie, his family, and all those affected.” Daniel Woodruff has been there on campus for for the last couple hours or so talking to folks out there getting a sense of what the campus um has endured. Although the campus is closed, he has been seeing a lot of police activity. So, let’s go ahead and check back in with Daniel now. Daniel. Yeah, Tamara. So, here on the west side of campus, it is very quiet. Really, the people that are left are media and law enforcement. And we know that law enforcement has a major presence here on the campus of Utah Valley University as they have evacuated the campus, told people to go home. Law enforcement has been escorting people out. We saw that a little bit ago. Uh anyone who’s was sheltering in place here in buildings or whatnot after the shooting of Charlie Kirk. We’ve seen on social media so many condemnations of political violence. We’ve seen it for Oh, sorry. We we came out of that live set a little bit early. We do have a new statement coming up um here from the Turning Point. That is the organization um from Charlie Kirk and it says with heavy heart that we confirm the death of Charlie James Kirk. He was murdered by a gunshot that took place during Turning Point USA’s the American Comeback Tour campus event at Utah Valley University. May he be received into the merciful arms of our loving savior who suffered and died for Charlie. We ask that everyone keep his family and loved ones in your prayers. And again, a vigil coming up to do that at 7:00 tonight. We want to reiterate, you know, some of people are talking and speculating about what may have happened, why it may have happened, uh their thoughts of of motivations behind today’s shooting. We don’t know and we haven’t been able to verify any of those. We’re hoping that we will get some more information coming up any minute here at a briefing that will take place at the university um in their one of their halls. We’re told the governor will be there, several people from law enforcement. And so we are just standing by as we wait for that to begin. And Alex Ferrero, he has been out there on campus for us as well. And I know there’s been several questions swirling in your mind as you’ve been able to talk to students. I mean, your own niece as well and and we’ve been hearing from young students. It’s just just a flood of emotions. Um, let’s check in with you now because I know we’re waiting for this press conference. We’re hoping to get more answers, Alex. Yeah, that press conference is set to begin any minute now right here inside the Keller building on the campus of UVU. There was a lot of officials, important types, uh, law enforcement, uh, heading that way as well. And about 15 minutes ago, we did see Governor Cox come out this way as well and head into the Fugal Gateway over there. It’s on the other side where Charlie Kirk’s event was happening. The governor wanted to see that uh for himself um and getting briefed as well before heading toward the Keller building with a lot of other administrators to have this press conference that we know is coming up. But you’re absolutely right. Shock, surprised. Um they don’t believe it. I mean, I’m at a loss for words, too. It’s just you just don’t expect something like this on a college campus uh at some kind of a rally such as as this one. We’ve heard that time and again from from students and also from a lot of uh uh young people who came here who weren’t students at UVU but just wanted uh to be a part of this to to hear what he had to say whether they agreed with him or not just to hear what he had to say. Uh something we showed you in the last five minutes the flags back there at UVU those green flags. We saw one of the workers here on campus lowering those flags to half staff, half masked out there. Um the American flag also here uh also lowered uh as this uh took place now what we’re looking maybe 3 and a half four hours or so uh ago. But again, it’s just a matter now waiting for the press conference to begin. Uh we’ll hear uh from plenty of officials in there and try to get some uh answers to a lot of questions right now such as security, such as um a suspect. Uh, I’ve been hearing all sorts of rumors that uh that maybe they know who a suspect is or were chasing the suspect. Did the suspect get away? Do they know who the suspect is? Is there a description of the suspect or a car or vehicle or something like that? Uh, all questions we hope to get answers to because one thing I think both sides agree with is that whoever did this, that person should be caught, deserves to be caught and and face justice that is coming uh their way. So, it’s just a matter now of finding out who that person is, where that person is, and uh and really what went down here at this event. So, uh hopefully we get some of that information here soon. I know that a lot of officials heading into the Keller building. Uh we should have that press conference coming up uh any minute now. We’ll send it back to you, Alex reporting live for us. We really appreciate your insight and I know as you mentioned, just so many questions right now. Thank you. And so, let’s go into that news conference, the side of that news conference at least. Dan Rasone is standing by. Dan, any news or any uh imminent start for them the information there? Right now, we’re still waiting on for the governor to arrive here and other key players are going to be coming up to the pulpit right here to be able to have a press conference. But we’re inside an auditorium right now on campus. And boy, there’s a lot of unanswered questions still out there, especially if the shooter is still out there. We did see some uh a picture that somebody sent me of some SWAT team members out in an ORM neighborhood there. I don’t know if you remember or not, but a little bit earlier we show you show showed you some of those officers racing away as if to go to somewhere close by campus here. I don’t know exactly what where they were going to look for or anything like that, but I somebody did send me a picture of some SWAT team members in a neighborhood there canvasing an area. So, we’re not exactly sure what they’re looking at. But again, this press conference expected to start at 4:00 right here. And we’re expecting the governor to be here. We’re expecting the FBI to be here and also the Department of Public Safety. Again, uh this is a podium right here. We see it all set up. Um we’re wanting to be able to talk to them. This is just a real tragedy. I mean, this is not only a local story or even a national story. This is going to be an international story here as to what happened here at UVU today. Um I did talk to a public affairs individual here on UVU campus. He said that Charlie had about eight security personnel there with him at that event. They also had several other uh security personnel from UVU that was also at that event. And so we’re still trying to get details exactly what happened there. But they say he told me that there was about 1,500 people gathered together at that event and um when it when this all went down. And so again, we’re still trying to find out from the Department of Public Safety and also the FBI as to what they’re going to be looking at. So, uh, we’re hoping that this press conference will get underway, but again, we have not seen the governor pull up. We have not seen, uh, the FBI pull up the league players in that area. Here on campus, it’s completely locked down right now. We had to kind of go through security in order to get into this building here just because they have everything locked down. the doors were locked and um in order to be able to get in here. So, they’re sweeping all the buildings. So, it’s very clear that uh maybe they still have not found the shooter or that they’re still making sure that he may not be hiding here on campus. I also saw some video of someone that sent me some video of possibly someone up on a roof. Now, again, we’re not able to confirm any of that. We’re not able to say what exactly that was, but again, somebody shot some video, some cell phone video of somebody up on a roof. Um, and I don’t know if that had anything to do with this or not. Um, it appears as though everyone we talked to that was so close to this, what was unusual, everyone that saw this happen, nobody saw the shooter. Uh, I I couldn’t interview anybody or find anybody that actually saw the gunman. And so there’s a lot of questions there as to where he may have been, he or she may have been when those shots were fired. But everybody telling me they heard one shot and then that’s when Charlie went down. And so again, still trying to find out a lot of uh questions here that we’re still trying to get to the bottom of, but we’ll keep you posted as soon as we know anymore and as soon as uh the governor walks in and we’re getting closer to starting this press conference. Back to you guys in the studio. All right, we appreciate that update, Dan. Yeah, Dan, we’re seeing some of the same things. We’re getting a lot of information now that’s hard to confirm. Things people have seen, people making speculations and and so it’s it’s hard to sort out that information and hopefully momentarily we will find we will see that. I know our reporters on the scene have seen Governor Cox on on campus. So, uh hopefully that will happen soon. Uh let’s check in with now Jod Reosa who is outside campus. Jody, what are you seeing on your end? So, I’m in front of the Fulton building. I’m going to have Greg pan around. We see a team of law enforcement here. They definitely have weapons on. They are ready to go. It’s been all hands on deck here today. Now, we’ve heard from dozens of people today. Primarily students, as you know, and the feelings have been shock, appalled, angry, sad, worried, scared, things that people just should not have to hear about. One of the things that I discovered today was a gentleman who he did something very honorable. He was he’s a professor here at UVU, but he also used to be in law enforcement. He was at the time in a building far away from the venue in the scene where Charlie Kirk got shot. And he came running, he said, toward the scene because he said, “I wanted to help students. I wanted to make sure that they were safe.” So his law enforcement instincts kicked in. Now, I wasn’t able to talk to him on camera. He said, you know, I need to figure out UVU’s protocol with the media first. So, give me a call tomorrow. So, hopefully we’ll have him. And just kind of what was going through his mind at the time. The fact that somebody somebody is running into danger, you know, that’s heroic to me. It sounds like press conference might be starting. We’re going to pan over to the SWAT team right here and I’m going to take it back to you in the studio. Thank you for that update. Yes, we are standing by to get answers to the outstanding questions. Number one being, what’s the status of the suspect? Um, we’ve heard people reporting troop or or or a group of of law enforcement in an ORM neighborhood. We’ve heard a lot of different things and so hopefully they will let us know if they know who the suspect is. Um, and and right now they’re not confirming that there is anyone in custody. All right, we want to check back in with KSL’s uh Sarah Martin. She has been at the Tempenogus Regional Hospital where you are telling us that they have since cancelled all appointments moving forward this afternoon. That’s right. Tempenogus Regional Hospital is on lockdown. All of the parking lots surrounding the hospital are closed at this time. Security guards and law enforcement personnel are telling people to go home. their appointments are canceled and to reschedu those appointments at a later date. UVU is just about two miles away from this h hospital campus at about 12:30 in the afternoon. That might have been a 5 to 8 minute drive here to this level three trauma center. We believe that Charlie Kirk was taken here just after that shooting at UVU. Though that hasn’t been in completely confirmed to us. There is a large police presence here. All of the doors are barricaded with police and those sirens are flashing. Those lights are flashing behind me here. Would you have a small group of people who are here to show support for Charlie Kirk who have shown up to show their love and support. They’re here because they’re they’re so worried about this situation. They’ve told me they’ve told me that they have been longtime supporters of Charlie’s that they’ve looked to him that he’s brought them hope in the past. And so to come here to stand here in the hot sun for a few hours, even some of them have been here for more than an hour feels like nothing. You know, it feels like a a a tribute that is necessary and a tribute that that has brought a little bit of hope to this dark dark day. Very sad about the news to hear. Confirmed by President Trump that Charlie Kirk did die. We believe he passed here at Tempenogus Regional Hospital. Again, all appointments are closed. It’s not clear yet why he was brought to this hospital. We know there are a few hospitals within about a 5minute range of UVU, but we believe he was brought here based on the number of police and the law enforcement personnel that are here on site at St. Regional Hospital. If you have any appointments here today, possibly even tomorrow, definitely cancel those today, but check in before you come here tomorrow morning as well. Reporting live here in ORM, I’m Sarah Martin, KSL5 News. All right, thank you. Uh, thanks for that update and for the information for everybody else at that hospital. Um, we’ve heard at least from one university, University of Utah, still open, but they will have an increased police presence for all of the classes and events that are still scheduled for the remaining of the week. Um, as we stand by for a news update that should start any minute, I wanted to read a statement from Congressman Blake Moore, Utah Congressman. He says, “Charlie’s passing is devastating. Above all, he was a father and a husband. My heart goes out to Erica, his children, and his whole family.” Yeah. the sentiments continue to pour in. Uh let’s check back in with Andrew Adams, also there on the UVU campus. Andrew, what have you been um from your vantage point, what have you been seeing and experiencing right now? Well, some interesting things. And albeit it’s really like the guys in army fatigues, basically SWAT gear that are garnering all the attention. But low-key interesting is what we’ve been watching going on in this parking lot which some officers I believe got into that pickup truck over there and you see it driving that way. But basically they’re going like car to car. So Stuart, if you can like point on me, but basically saw them with their cell phones kind of going around the cars remaining in the parking lot and then I don’t know if they’re recording video. I don’t know if they’re taking pictures, but maybe presumably they’re thinking if there’s not a shooter in custody maybe one of these cars might have a connection. I don’t know. But it makes you wonder what they were doing out in the parking lot with their phone. Seeming to document the remaining cars here is what it looked like just from a late lay perspective standing here. So obviously we’ve seen a lot of movement still. Uh it’s I would say very much an evolving situation. Last time he came to me uh SWAT was basically rushing to somewhere. We weren’t a we tried to figure out where that was. We weren’t able to figure out uh exactly where they went. Uh but uh there was definitely some urgency in where they were going and that was a little while ago. Uh but still even around on campus where we’re seeing sweeps as I can point you over here. We see some more officers making their way out this way. Uh so still I I I would presume an active uh sweeping operation going on here and certainly was of interest what we were watching going on here in the parking lot with those cars as it it seemed that police were documenting the cars remaining here in the parking lot. Would they have a connection? Hard to say, but you know, if this goes along down the road of an investigation, something like that, even a small thing. We talk about this with even up to cold cases, sometimes the smallest clues will lead to a big break in the case. And so perhaps uh that’s what they’re hoping for. Back to the back to you guys. Yeah, certainly a lot of uh questions that will be asked at this press conference that hopefully will get underway shortly. They’re testing the microphones. We’re keeping an eye on it so you won’t miss anything. We’re keeping an eye on that situation and just trying to bring updates as we get them. Um, an update from Representative Candace Perruchi, um, who says she is heartsick and devastated, shocked by the murder of Charlie Kirk. He dedicated his life to engaging young people in political discourse. Same reaction that we’re hearing from so many, whether, you know, in public life or just private students who were there and described what they had to witness today. Let’s go now to uh Jody Reosa who has been speaking with some of those young students there on campus. Jody, yes, students are still milling around. They’re still trying to grapple with what’s happened today. I don’t have somebody with me, but I did just talk to police and they did confirm that Governor Cox is here on campus. And so, it’s just a matter of, you know, within minutes, you know, even less than that, that the press conference is going to start. you know, to to go along with what um Andrew Adams was saying, we’re seeing the exact same thing here in this part of the parking lot. You know, law enforcement going around taking pictures of license plates, trying to find clues, trying to connect the dots with, you know, who this shooter could be. And the fact that he’s still at large, I think it’s very unsettling for them as well. So, I’ll let it go back to you. You can you can take it from here. Oh. All right, Jody Renosa reporting live for us from the UVU campus. And Deie, you know, we throughout this last couple of hours as our reporters have been there on scene on campus and talking to young students, young students who were seeing Charlie Kirk for the first time, wanting to see them here at home in our own backyard and to go to a somewhat friendly crowd where uh you know, this is going to be a fairly cordial event. Of course, we know Charlie Kirk uh traveling on campuses all throughout the state where political discourse back and forth debate. It is part of what he does with Turning Point USA scheduled to come to Utah State University later in the month. Um interestingly and that and that so that tour had continued. But uh yeah, we are hearing uh that they are that they are testing the the microphones, but that also we will start getting updates from uh Cameron Road and from the highway patrol um public safety. So again, we’re just we’re standing by to get more information that is updated. We’ve been uh here now reporting for a couple of hours and have heard a lot of eyewitnesses um statements that have been that have been heartfelt, that have been shocked and we want to play those. I think we have some of those for you to hear. You know, we hear all the time that we’re the problem. We’re the violent ones. We’re the issue. And yet, this is the second mass like shooting attempt on a political figure. First Donald Trump, now we have Charlie Kirk. But yet, we’re the problem. We’re sitting next to each other. We just heard an immediate pop. We’re like, what’s what’s going on here? And then after that pop, we just saw him and his neck. We saw him fall backward. Blood shooting out of his neck, hit the floor, and we we just had to bolt it out of there. I just started booking it. My friend, threw her drink and we just got out of there like as fast as we could. None of us believed it at first and then then but we still just got out and saw the hordes of people running. I was in a room fairly close to where it happened and then some people just ran in and yelled active shooter. So we we all just got out. I’m still shaking and I’m still still crying. I love Charlie Kirk. He’s awesome and I pray for him and his family and I pray for everybody that was here to witness this. It’s it’s awful and I don’t understand why we can’t have something like this that is truly innocent. You know, there were the the non-believers, the ones that didn’t like him, and that’s fine, but to shoot him, he doesn’t deserve this. Certainly some raw emotion there from supporters of Charlie Kirk this afternoon to witness such a traumatic event, a shooting there on the campus of UVU. Let’s go to new specialist Andrew Adams who has been on campus. Andrew, what’s happening over that end of the campus? Well, again, uh the uh clearing seems to continue as well as evidence gathering. As we mentioned just a few minutes ago, officers were passing through this parking lot seemingly with their cell phones. uh it appeared taking pictures of individual cars. Again, it’s it it’s unclear I perhaps it’s even unclear to them at this point whether that will have bearing in the investigation, but you could see a a logical uh benefit of that. Uh perhaps if a car was left here, if at longer than everything else or perhaps that gives them an idea what has left, what has come and gone, uh then perhaps there’s a tie there to a potential shooter. So, uh, again, without knowing exactly what they were doing, it did look like they were photographing individual vehicles and going through and essentially sweeping this parking lot. And of course, these have are left here much longer than a lot of people who cleared out of campus quite a while ago. Now, uh, as you can see, things have quieted down here. I think we saw uh, some students up over at this end uh, milling around, but a lot of the students that were out here earlier have cleared understandably. It’s a it’s a warm afternoon. I don’t know the exact temperature, but certainly at least mid 80s, if not hotter, and that’s taking a toll. In fact, I wanted to mention that a sheriff’s vehicle came by, gave us bottled water. I greatly appreciate that. It is a hot day out here. But, uh, again, uh, it’s interesting what investigative steps are taking place while at the same time, it seems to be that there’s an active effort going through sweeping buildings. We’ve seen lots of people in SWAT uniforms uh going uh as we understood they were going room to room and even potentially leaving campus a little bit earlier. We saw uh SWAT vehicles. Uh something that I would I’m not sure if it was a Bearcat. I think that’s what uh sometimes those armored vehicles are called, but it left at an accelerated pace and then we saw some PE SWAT officers get into a black unmarked Jeep also literally sped off. And so it makes you wonder what they were going to investigate at that time. But again, an investigation at least to the lay eyes leaves more questions than answers. But of course, they’re doing what they can to get those uh very important answers right now. Well, Andrew, what you’ve had to report today, a gesture of a bottle of water. You hang on to that. That’s a that’s the positive thing and the thing you want to keep in mind um on a day like today. Thank you. All right, we want to check back in with Dan Rascon who has been standing by. We have been awaiting a press conference from the Utah Department of Public Safety, hoping to get some more answers. Let’s go ahead and check in with him now, Dan. Yeah, that’s correct. We’re inside an auditorium here on campus right now where a press conference is expected to take place any minute now. We just got basically about a 7minute warning that the press conference will be starting here shortly. This is where will be happening up here. All the major players of course will be here for this press conference. We’re expecting the governor to be showing up along with also the FBI and the Department of Public Safety. So again, this is a a case that’s going to go international, of course. A lot of people wanting a lot of answers as to what went wrong here, what happened, and uh just a lot of uh fear, of course, on campus from students as far as what they saw and the trauma they experienced. And then also coming back to school, you know, what this is going to be like. And so again, I think the main questions we want to be able to try and answer right now is do they have any idea where this shooter may be at this time or if they have any indication as to if he’s still on campus or not or what they’re finding and those kind of things. Also, as far as the security goes, I did talk to somebody from the uh UVU public affairs department. They told me that Charlie had about eight security officers or so personal security officers with him. And then they also had UVU security officers there. And so um what exactly, you know, obviously from the video that we see of what happened there, uh they weren’t standing necessarily right next to him there, but he was open enough to where somebody could shoot and fire those gunshots. Now, where that gunfire came from is the other big question. Everyone we’ve been talking to here, nobody seems to have seen an actual gunman or uh somebody that actually fired that gun and where that shot came from. All they say is that they basically they heard that gunshot go off and then they saw Charlie drop. So, um again, we’re getting video as you guys have been mentioning there, the station and other things. We’re starting to see video merge in of people showing somebody possibly up on the roof or somebody in another location. And so again, that’s all speculation right now, but th those are videos that uh police are going to be looking at. We’re hoping to be able to get some answers to from FBI. And uh again, we’re hoping probably within the next 5 minutes or so that this press conference will be starting. We do start to see some people starting to file in here. And so we might be uh getting something here pretty soon as to when this may start, but we’ll we’ll go ahead and u we’ll go ahead and get it back to you guys. And of course, as soon as this takes place, we’ll take it live here and hopefully we can be able to get some of these answers. Back to you guys. We appreciate you being there and giving us those minute-byminute updates. Dan, thank you. Yeah, uh we got the two-minute warning do, I think, for this news conference. Just a few uh updates of things happening coming forward. Um there’s the vigil tonight at 7 o’clock at the state capital building and uh Sarah Martin joins us live from the hospital where the repercussions there Sarah had been that everything was cancelled on that hospital campus. That’s right. All appointments canceled here at Tempenogus Regional Hospital since about 1:30 this afternoon. So roughly maybe an hour 45 minutes after we believe Charlie Kirk was brought here. All appointments canled. Police and security blocking all entry. This is an NBC News special report. Here’s Tom Yamas. And we are coming back on the air with breaking news right now. Officials in Utah are holding a news conference on the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed while giving a presentation at Utah Valley University. We’ve just learned from the FBI director Cash Patel posting this on X that the suspect in that assassination is now in custody. We’re monitoring this news conference. We’re going to bring it to you as soon as it starts. It looks like they’ve started to speak. Let’s listen in. He later passed. The Utah Department of Public Safety will be co-leading this criminal investigation to find this killer along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are working in unison with the county sheriff’s office, the local police department, and the university police department, all of which have been very cooperative and fully engaged in this process. Shortly after the shooting, we did have a suspect in custody, George Zim, but he was released from custody after we identified that he did not match the shooting suspect um and was not an accurate person of interest. However, he has been booked into the uh county jail by Utah Valley University Police Department for obstruction of justice. We do still have an active investigation for the person of interest. This incident occurred with a large crowd around. There was one shot fired and one one victim. While the suspect is at large, we believe this was a targeted attack towards one individual. This is a tragic moment in our state and in our country. As we heal, we encourage everyone who is struggling with news of the incident to call 988, our state mental health crisis line. In addition to that, our partners with the FBI will also be discussing other ways we can communicate through the public for tips and other information. Thank you. Good afternoon. On behalf of the FBI, we extend our sincerest condolences to the family and friends of Charlie Kirk. Our thoughts are also with the people who witnessed this traumatic event. We know that you what you experienced was very difficult. Our thoughts are with you as well. As soon as we heard about the shooting, special agents and personnel from the Salt Lake field office responded immediately. We have full resources devoted to this investigation, including tactical, operational, investigative, and intelligence. To be clear, the FBI will fully support and co-lead this investigation alongside with our partners. We are working on setting up a digital media tip line, and as soon as it’s established, we’ll get that information out to everyone. I know there’s a lot of questions. This is very much an active case, and this investigation is in its early stages. We are following all the leads and all the evidence. If anyone has any information, please report it to the FBI or local law enforcement. Thank you. On behalf of President Tubanz, who we’ve been communicating with and she’s on her way back right now, I um say that on behalf of Utah Valley University, we are shocked and saddened by the tragic passing of Charlie Kirk. We express our sincere condolences to the Kirk family. We grieve with our students, faculty, and staff who bore witness to this unspeakable tragedy. He was invited by the student group Turning Point USA to speak on our campus. We firmly believe that UVU is a place to share ideas and to debate openly and respectfully. Any attempt to infringe on those rights has no place here. We do not condone any form of violence at UVU and seek to make our campus a safe place for all. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this uh on this dark and and tragic occasion. I want to thank our law enforcement officers who are leading this investigation, starting with Chief Long uh and and his uh his response here with the UVU Police Department. Um, we’re grateful for your leadership and uh and your team and again to the the speakers that you’ve just heard from who are are co-leading this investigation. I also want to recognize Sheriff Mike Smith who has been an invaluable partner as uh as this investigation moves forward. I’ve been in touch with uh with with President Trump, with FBI Director Cash Patel. Um we are completely aligned with our state and federal partners as uh as we work through this case. Now this is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation. I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination. We are celebrating 250 years of the founding of this great nation. That founding document, the Declaration of Independence, that this this great experiment on which we embarked together 250 years ago, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. The first one of those is life. And today, a life was taken. Charlie Kirk was first and foremost a husband and a dad to two young children. He was also very much politically involved and that’s why he was here on campus. Charlie believed in the power of free speech and debate to shape ideas and to persuade people. Historically, our university campuses in this nation and here in the state of Utah have been the place where truth and ideas are formulated and debated. And that’s what he does. He comes on college campuses and he debates. That is foundational to the formation of our country to our most basic constitutional rights. And when someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened. Now, we have a person of interest in custody. The investigation is ongoing, but I want to make it crystal clear right now to whoever did this, we will find you. We will try you and we will hold you accountable to the furthest extent of the law. And I just want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here in the state of Utah. Our nation is broken. We’ve had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania and we had an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate and former president of the United States and now current president of the United States. Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken. Nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk. Our hearts are broken. We mourn with his wife, his children, his family, his friends. We mourn as a nation. If anyone in the sound of my voice celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere. I don’t care what his politics are. I care that he was an American. We desperately need our country. We desperately need leaders in our country. But more than the leaders, we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be. To ask ourselves, is this is this it? Is this what 250 years has wrought on us? I pray that that’s not the case. I pray that those who hated what Charlie Cook stood for will put down their social media and their pens and pray for his family and that all of us all of us will try to find a way to stop hating our fellow Americans. With that, we’re happy to take a few questions. The FBI director is posting that a social that a suspect is in custody. I would just like clarification. Do you or do you not have a suspected shooter in custody? We have a person of interest in custody that is being interviewed right now. We do. That is not George Z. That is not George Zinn. That is correct. Are you still searching for looking for another shooter or anybody else related to this? Yes, we are actively looking for anyone and everyone who has any any possible information relating to this shooting. Can you tell us details about the suspect being taken into custody? Where, you know, how long ago? We we cannot at this point, but we will get you that information when when we can. Is there believed to be a second individual involved in the shooting? At at this point there is no information that would lead us to believe that there is a second person involved. Can you guys talk about the possible shooting? Um we do you want to talk about what we know there? Yeah. The only information we have on on the suspect uh the possible shooter is taken from closed circuit TV here on campus. Um we do have that. We’re we’re analyzing it. Um, but it is security camera footage, so you can you can u kind of guess what the what the quality of that is. Um, but we do know uh dressed in in all all dark clothing. Um, but we don’t have much better description other than that. Where shot came from? The shot came from here on campus um from a a location um at a roof uh potentially from a roof. Yes. A longer distance shot from a roof. So to clarify, with the security camera footage you have and the person of interest that’s in custody, do those does that match up? That’s what we’re trying to decipher right now. Did FBI or DHS have anything on threat? I can’t speak to that. I’ll just say that the investigation is ongoing and as soon as we have further information, we will be sure to release it. Any indications, foreign intelligence involved? As of now, I can’t comment on any of that. Thank you. Can you talk a little bit about the security of the event itself? But who is there securitywise and and what happens on these kind of events? Chief Long. So, my name is Jeff Long. I’m the police chief here at UVU. And I’ll tell you right now, we are devastated. We’re a small uh small police department. Uh we have a very large campus. We have over 40,000 students. And we love our students. We love our visitors. And we’re devastated by what happened today. This is a police chief’s nightmare. Um I’m I’m very saddened for the Kirk family. Um, I know his uh his wife and parents uh found out about this. You know, obviously he’s away from home. He’s here in Utah. They find out uh by police officer uh that visits their home. That’s tragic. Nobody wants that. But I can tell you about our venue today. This was an open venue. This is outside. Uh we did have um six officers working that event. Um we had probably over 3,000 people that were in attendance. Um it is sat down in kind of a bowl area here on the central campus. We had a waterfall area and so he was kind of in a a lower area uh surrounded by uh by buildings. Um you know we we had um uh some plane closed police officers that were in the crowd as well. You know we train for these things and and you think you you you have things covered and um you know these things um unfortunately they happen. you try to get you try to get your bases covered and unfortunately today we didn’t and because of that we had this tragic incident. So we did have officers there. We had Charlie Kirk’s team um he has a security team that travels with him and they were here with him when when he was shot. Was the gun recovered? I’m sorry. Say was the weapon recovered? Um I at this point I I can’t disclose that. There was a question being asked about mass shootings. Was that person apprehended? And do you know who asked that question? Say the question again. I don’t know if I understand what you’re saying. When Charlie Kirk was shot, he was answering a question about mass shootings specifically. Was that person apprehended? And do you know who asked that question? Uh I do not we do not have that at this moment. Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for just one more question. So thank you. Yeah. Um question for the chief as well. Um, was it your team or Kirk’s team or a combination of both that kind of set the security protocol for the event? So, we work together, you know, he has his team and they do this all over the country. We all know that this is not uncommon for them. Uh, they’re very comfortable on campuses and I was coordinating with his lead security guy and um, uh, so yeah, we were working together. Was this a sharp shooter type shot? Ladies and gentlemen, that’s that’s um, those are all the questions that will be answered today. Um, again, thank you for for covering this. Uh, we will be uh we’ll be updating you as soon as we have additional information through uh through normal channels, working with law enforcement. Again, our our deepest uh condolences uh to the uh to the Kirk family and uh and to the students who were who were there today. Um and uh I would I would just ask everyone everywhere to please pray for their family and uh and to pray for our country. Um we need it now more than ever. Thank you. All right, we’ve just been listening to Utah officials, including Governor Spencer Cox, talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. A bit of confusion there for many of us covering this and and the press as well that was gathered because uh the head of the FBI, the FBI director Cash Patel put out a a post on X just before this news conference saying that the subject of the shooting, I’m going to read it here, the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody. Now, it was unclear from the news conference who exactly was in custody, but later the governor saying there was a person of interest in custody and later a police officer saying that they’re trying to sort of connect the dots. Right now, I do want to bring in our national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent Tom Winter. Tom, look, things are very fluid. This just happened a few hours ago. Uh, it was an assassination from Long Range. It was planned out from what we’ve heard. There was a suspect in dark clothing, they believe, seen on closed circuit TV at Utah Valley University. The question now is it seemed like the FBI director went a little further than officials in Utah were comfortable with. Do you think this is an issue of semantics or they have the man they were looking for? Yeah, it’s an issue of semantics, Tom. And according to our colleague Mike Cosner, who is talking to the top of the FBI tonight, there’s growing confidence that the individual identified by officials in Utah as a person of interest that they now have in custody is in fact the person they believe could be the shooter in this. So, uh, to just break down the semantics briefly, uh, sometimes they don’t want to call somebody a suspect for certain legal reasons, uh, in their ability to question and their ability to talk to that person. So, that could be at play here. Uh, in addition to that, they want to make sure that they can match up the evidence that they’ve recovered and seen so far to this person before officially calling them a suspect, right? But right now, they have a real good feeling that the person they think is responsible for this assassination, they do have in fact in custody. The governor saying they’re going to look for anybody that may be connected to the shooting, but they don’t believe that there was a second person involved in the shooting. That the shooter likely was on the roof of the building about 200 yards away from where Charlie Kirk was speaking. Long range rifle able to hit Charlie Kirk somewhere in the neck or the chest, killing him in front of a crowd of thousands that had gathered at this university there in Utah. I I guess my next question to you is they were talking about the security there. police officer that was in charge, I think it was the chief of police there, saying they had numerous officers clearly in hindsight, not enough, but also the person who had planned this out, maybe had had thought a little more than others had there and and was intent on killing Charlie Kirk, even from very far away. I mean, there becomes a point for these university officials, for people at these uh high-profile institutions. I mean, do we just go to Secret Service protection for every single major event? Because that’s the type of thing that you’re seeing. And by the way, we still had two attempted assassinations on then candidate Donald Trump, now President Donald Trump, and he did have Secret Service protection. As we well know, if this individual was some measurements 500 ft, some 200 yards away uh with a semi-automatic rifle, that is not a particularly difficult shot for somebody that would have planned for this, would have had access to the weapon uh to be able to conduct what they were able to conduct today. We should clear up something too that officials cleared up as well. There was a lot of video and initial report that the suspect was in custody early on. And there was social media video of an elderly man who had been handcuffed. Police now saying that person has been arrested. They are not connected to the shooting. At least not right now, but they were arrested for obstruction of justice. Yes, that’s George Zinn. Uh this is an individual according to publicly available documents and records and what officials said at the press conference is somebody who they have had interactions with before, a well-known local protester. But again, we want to be clear. There’s no indication this individual had anything to do with what is now being described by officials there as a political assassination. What that person’s role is, whether or not they’ll ultimately go through the trial process, uh, we’ll see. Presumably, they’ll profess their innocence as well. I want to bring in our chief justice and national affairs correspondent, Kelly O’Donnell. Kelly, we obviously and we will not lose sight of what happened here. A political assassination in Utah on a college campus. the governor of Utah there, Spencer Cox, speaking passionately about Charlie Kirk, getting emotional and saying how this assassin had taken the life of a young father, a husband, someone who’s passionate about politics and exercising his freedom of speech, something that all Americans deserve and we have the right to. and talking about how ugly politics has gotten and really that we’re at a point we haven’t been in decades really since maybe the 1960s but it’s gotten a bit out of control citing what’s happened in Minnesota with those Democratic lawmakers with the the governor of Pennsylvania and then of course what happened to President Trump inches away of being killed Cory Compator a supporter of the president though losing his life just behind the president in that butler Pennsylvania rally and then a second attempt on President Trump’s life as well we are in this period where there is acting out toward political figures. We don’t yet know what a motive is. If this was politically motivated or if this was a suspect uh who may have been drawn to the fact that this was a largecale event. We have seen that in other instances of national violence where sometimes mental illness is a is a factor, sometimes it is attention seeking and sometimes there can be a political motive, an anger about the views of a subject of the shooting and we’ve seen that over many different cases with different dimensions. So those are some of the questions that will be so critical now. So, an individual in custody, that person they will try to uh gain information and then they also have the ability then once they’ve identified a suspect to then do all of the other modern work which is looking at their electronics, looking at their communications, looking at uh things as basic as the vehicle the person may have used. Was there any evidence there? All of those pieces. We live in a world now where cameras seem to be everywhere. both fixed surveillance and security cameras as well as handheld phones and people recording an event and certainly there were many different angles of this. What can that tell officials about this? Uh also learning more about the weapon, when was it purchased, what type of weapon, all of those questions are still to be determined. That nitty-gritty work will go on, but separately in a parallel track is the emotional uh sort of cascade of what happened here. And Governor Cox certainly tried to put that back into human terms by talking about Charlie Kirk, not as the political activist that he was, not as the person who was inspiring to many young conservatives and confounding to some on the political left, but as a young married father with two small children and the entire Kirk family now suffering this just irreplaceable loss of of of a husband and father. So, so many dimensions to this, Tom, and the investigation is just one piece of it. The political fallout another. We’ve seen broad condemnation from across the political spectrum, including uh not only the current president who knew Charlie Kirk as a friend, but also former presidents like Joe Biden and Barack Obama who have commented about no place for political violence. So there is a reckoning always that follows these heartbreaking and tragic events about the role of guns in our society, the role of political discourse and when people get animated and and engaged, what are the lines that people must stay within and that is part of the debate in and of itself. Tom Kelly, we thank you. I do want to bring in meet the press moderator Kristen Welker. Kristen, this is a sad day for the country and and I know just like you have, I’ve been hearing from a lot of Republican sources, people who knew Charlie Kirk who they themselves are incredibly sad. This was a tragedy. This was somebody who had worked very hard for a political party he believed in, for a movement he believed in. It was his life, right? He was a rising star in Republican politics and he worked so closely with so many Republican- elected officials. And even though he did not have an office, even though he did not run for office, he was not elected, he was in so many ways a leader in that party, he had a huge platform. And because of that, he was a target for someone, a deranged individual who may now be in custody. So Kristen, I want to ask you the conversations you’re having with your Republican sources along the same lines. Tom, I think you captured it really well. And the fact that in talking to a White House official, it was described to me that everyone there is just in a state of shock because they said everyone has close ties to Charlie Kirk at that White. And just to zoom out a little bit, let’s talk a little bit about who Charlie Kirk was. He founded Turning Point USA. Tom, he was just 18 years old. It’s really extraordinary to think about. He really energized young voters. He wanted to bring them into the political discourse. He wanted them to enjoy talking about politics. And he has been a supporter of President Trump since the very beginning, 2016. Helped to really energize young voters to go to the polls for his first election and then in this latest race played a pivotal role as well, Tom. And that is why you are hearing from so many Republicans who are just in a state of shock and devastated, but Democrats too. everyone Tom saying this has to end but I think the question is how can it end and what if anything can lawmakers do to bring this political violence to an end you have ticked through all of the different examples I was struck when Governor Cox said our nation is broken really powerful Tom yeah and on that point I want to bring in our senior Washington correspondent Hi Jackson who’s been covering this with us and our team here moment by moment I I do want to ask you you wonder you know we we covered Butler what happened in Butler Pennsylvania. We covered what happened in Minnesota, what happened with the Pennsylvania governor. We cover all these events in the news cycle moves fast. But but I just feel that we’re getting to a point now where where this is going to change things. And you wonder how people like other people like Charlie Kirk on the right, on the left, people in the center, people who are passionate about politics and then elected officials themselves, how are they going to go out there in the public? How are they going to campaign? You know, Tom Winter brought up a great point. The Secret Service can’t protect everybody. How exactly are politics going to move forward in this country? And can I add to that, Tom, too, in addition to these um I think thoughtful and important questions, what about people who are not elected? What about these call them influencers, call them whatever you want, who are in the public sphere, who have a a huge outsized voice among people who have of all various political persuasions who are now starting to express real fear, concern about what happens to them, just like Charlie Kirk was not elected. He is not somebody who was a lawmaker who would have been privy to some of these protections here, Tom. And I think in addition to the to the horror and the shock and the anger, there is also a degree of fear as well about where we’re going, about what is happening here at this moment. And I think I was struck uh by what you heard from Governor Cox there who talked about what what Charlie Kirk was doing in Utah in the first place. As you well know from these events, he goes out, he went out, he would talk to people, he would have disagreements, he would have debates. That was the point. The discussion and the debate was the point. that is the free speech uh which is one of the ideals that this country is founded on and governor Cox said that when somebody takes the life of a person because of their ideas or ideals then that very constitutional foundation is threatened. I think you are seeing uh a a reaction already tonight uh here in Washington and beyond related to the questions that you’re asking and in some corners a call to action uh as as the as the shock is still there and as so many as we said across the political spectrum are grappling with that. what is the call to action going to be? And I think to a degree that conversation is one that will be had in the days to come here in Washington, at the capital, and at the White House. Uh but at this moment, I think there is a lot of one word that I’ve heard from talking to eyewitnesses even again and again, processing. Processing what has just happened. And and and Hi, if you can also speak to the point, I mean, Charlie Kirk’s influence, uh his reach, his platform, the president of the United States told the country that this man had died. That’s how close he was to the president and that’s how big of a role he had at least within the president’s movement. That’s right. And that is listen that is unusual to hear the first word of of somebody’s death come from the sitting president of the United of the United States. And to your point, it speaks of the role that Charlie Kirk had. You know, his team said that every month he reached something like a hundred million people with his social media reach online. He had a show. He would do these campus tours. He was a voice uh not just among young conservatives but inside the the powers and the halls of power here in Washington. Close with the Trump family as we’ve been talking about friends with them. Tom, not just somebody who you would call, you know, a staff a staffer or an adviser or an aid or an outside adviser. He was personally close with some of these folks, including for example, Vice President JD Vance. He fought for the Trump Vance movement in this election. He he was the youngest speaker at the RNC in 2016. He’s been around politics for many years and so uh the the degree I think to which Washington uh official Washington is reeling tonight I think is very real. Tom. All right, Hie, stand by for us. We thank you for that. I want to bring in Tom Winter again. Tom, let’s get our viewers caught up here because we know that somebody is now in custody. Uh the FBI director calling him a subject, the Utah governor calling him a person of interest, but but investigators and law enforcement believe they have the man who allegedly assassinated Charlie Kirk. That’s right, Tom. There’s growing confidence tonight that the individual that Utah officials have described as a person of interest that the FBI director in his ex-social media posts described as a suspect is in fact the person that they’ve been looking for and is the person responsible for this political assassination. The FBI Salt Lake City field office which will work with the Utah officials in this investigation uh telling people that if they have any videos and you know Tom you and I have seen probably what a dozen two dozen videos of this today. If you have any videos any digital evidence tips.fbi fbi.gov or to reach out to uh your local uh your local field office with any sort of information about this. We’ve been stopping these videos because obviously we don’t want to show the death of somebody. That’s generally our policy here obviously. Uh but yes, they’re looking for more information and there’s growing confidence in this. It did strike me at the press conference hub. They were asked if there was any sort of a foreign connection and the official that answered said no comment. Was that no comment because they just didn’t know yet or that’s an avenue that they’re investigating? Again, all questions that we have and question investigators and it’s still very early. They also revealed a little bit of the evidence they had or at least the clues they’re looking at. Closed circuit television, the suspect allegedly dressed in all black. Have they mentioned the weapon yet? Have they mentioned any casings yet? Are they not there yet? At least not ready to reveal that to the public. Maybe they don’t. Not information we have yet, but just in speaking with firearms uh experts and and listening to our own Jim Kavanaaugh, our expert, this would have had to have been a long gun at that range to somebody with a handgun would have been very difficult. So, some sort of a long gun, either a rifle or a semi-automatic rifle that somebody would have used to be able to hit. And it’s chilling how similar this is to Butler in the sense that it was somebody on a roof, right, shooting down from a roof at a public event, someone speaking and then just taking them out from that from that vantage point. Yeah. Let’s put ourselves in the in the shoes of that chief of police today. He’s got an event on campus. Charlie Kirk appeared to have some security with him. He has some officers that are there. And so now Tom, you’re in a situation where you’re going to host these events on campus and these days given how you know our political environment. Everybody’s kind of a a lightning rod uh as Hie was referring to, as Kelly was referring to. So now you’ve got to have what 360°ree protection. You’ve got to have uh people that are up high in certain areas. Uh it just underscores the challenge of it. It may also underscore the planning that this individual could have taken to carry this incident out. Tom, the governor calling this a political assassination, but we still don’t have a clear motive. It is very early, but what they are signifying is that Charlie Kirk was a political figure. He has since been killed. And if this is the man they have in custody, this is the assassin. They will try to figure out why he targeted Charlie Kirk, right? And they alluded to at the press conference that they’re uh obviously trying to have some sort of an interview and in the process of trying to talk to this individual, they’ll look at that. They’ll look at their phones and laptops. Everybody knows that now. that’s your own personal diary and recordkeeper and see if this individuals has any sort of writings and whatever statements they might make to law enforcement could be helpful in their investigation and that could also potentially trip uh federal charges beyond the state uh murder charge you would presume. And credit to them that they they worked pretty fast and if this is the man they got him they got him quickly. Yeah, I mean within 6 hours. Yes, within four or five hours actually. Okay, Tom Winter, we thank you for that. That’s going to conclude this NBC News special report and we’ll have much more ahead on Nightly News in just moments. I’m Tom Yamos. We thank you so much for watching this special report [Music] case. And so sir, they gave that a very close look and then uh moved on to some other cars in the parking lot. But it did seem like they took uh a lot more interest in this one than uh others in the parking lot so far. And that effort uh continues uh just a a looks like a couple of rows away as they continue to go car to car. In fact, uh, if we have a minute, let Steuart, if you can just reposition and push up, you can actually see what he’s doing right here next to that gray vehicle, maybe three rows down the way. And now he’s moving on to the next car, uh, which is more of like a a teal sedan. But this has been going on here for at least the last I mean pro presumably a lot longer, but at least a half hour to hour. Uh, police officers going car to car now stopping up behind a blue car next to it. uh basically document documenting what’s going on in this parking lot. Perhaps that helps the investigation at some point. We’ll push it back to the studio. All right, Andrew, thank you. We appreciate your update. This isn’t an active investigation. We are going to take a one minute break and come back to start uh from the top with all that we know on KSL News Live at 5. For temperature, warmer than normal, whether it’s sunny out, pushing closer to the low 90s or a storm is moving in in St. George, it’s pretty overcast. KSL weather specialists are working for you. Forecast today does call for cloud cover with the latest changes. High pressure to the north moves off to the west. What to expect for the day? 93 to 88. And what’s ahead in the forecast Friday? We get a little bit more moisture. Stay with KSL. I believe you. Good answer. On air, online, and on the KSL weather app. [Music] This is breaking news from KSL. It was pretty terrifying. Probably the scariest thing I’ve ever been a part of. And we just ended up turning and running. There was just crowds of people screaming and then just like shooter, shooter, gun. So I was in a room fairly close to where I happened and then some people just ran in and yelled active shooter. So we we all just got out. This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation. And I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk is dead after he was shot in the neck at a speaking event at Utah Valley University in Oram. Kirk was speaking in Orum during the noon hour when an unknown suspect shot him in the neck. At around 2:45, President Donald Trump confirmed on his truth social account that Kirk had died. Reaction and condolences have been pouring in all afternoon from around the state and across the country. I’m just really shocked about what happened. I may not agree with Charlie Kirk, but no one deserves to be executed like that. We have live team coverage from ORM right now. We’ve been talking to dozens of students on UVU campus, police, politicians, and attendees there. What many people witnessed today is disturbing. Here is one firsthand account from an eyewitness. I was working my way up to the stand to ask Charlie some questions. Um at that moment um that the shot rang out. I look over and I see Charlie Kirk slump over for just a split second. Um and the crowd just pushes back. Uh there’s a huge a huge stampede pushing back. People are jumping into the into the fountain. A person of interest is in custody. anyone who saw a shooter. No one saw a shooter or at least reports seeing that or anything else important. Uh but if they do have information, there is a tip line and law enforcement definitely wants to hear from you right now. That tip line is fbi.gov/utah valley shooting. The website is there on your screen. fbi.gov/utah valley shooting. News specialist Alex Cabrero joins me live from Utah Valley University campus. Alex, you’ve been there all afternoon. And you even you talked to students, staff, even your niece who was there. Sum up what you’ve heard today. Uh yeah, it’s been 4 and 1/2 hours now since this shooting happened. But I think the shock waves and the effects from this what happened at just after 12:30 today. That’s going to be felt for quite some time. Still a lot of shock. Still a lot of just people saying they don’t believe exactly what happened that it actually happened. Now, when it happened, there was one single shot. From what we heard from Utah Department of Public Safety, there was just one single shot and immediately people started running away from the scene. People heard active shooter. People heard the word gun. People heard the word shooting. People started running. There were a few people who froze thinking, “Is this really happening? Did this really happen? And was this some kind of a stunt? Maybe was it part of the show, not realizing that it did in fact happen?” We spoke with several people with students and even people who came here who weren’t students but wanted to be a part of all of this. Not just because maybe they agreed with him. Even if they disagreed with him, they wanted to hear what Charlie what Charlie Kirk had to say. That’s part of listening to both sides when this happened. They said they can’t believe what happened right in front of their eyes. And I pray for everybody that was here to witness this. It’s it’s awful. And I don’t understand why we can’t have something like this that is truly innocent. You know, there were the the non-believers, the ones that didn’t like him, and that’s fine, but to shoot him, he doesn’t deserve this. And that’s something we have heard time and time again from several people that no matter if you disagree with with Charlie Kirk, if you agree with Charlie Kirk, if you don’t have a position that something like this shouldn’t happen, especially on a college campus where it is encouraged to have different ideas and different thoughts and different ideologies. It remains to be seen exactly what happened, what what the motive was. Uh we are still hearing words that is there a person of interest in custody? We hear yes, but is it the shooter? We don’t know that for sure at this point, but certainly we will get more answers on that in due time. And a big part of what we’re hearing again from Governor Governor uh Spencer Cox is that this was a political assassination, something we’ve seen far too often in the past few years in the United States. He says we don’t have the answers on how to bring us all together, but that’s certainly something he would like to see happen as well as pretty much everybody here I’ve spoken with today. For live at 5, I’m Alex Cabo. Yes, Alex. Thank you. Very much a fluid investigation still going forward. Now, let’s go live now to new specialist Sarah Martin. She is at the Tempenogus Hospital where Charlie Kirk was transported after the shooting. And this event has obviously had a broad effect on hospital operations there. Sarah, absolutely. Timanugas Regional Hospital canled closed for the day. All appointments following Charlie Kirk being brought here. Entrances, exits are closed. Anybody coming to the hospital was turned away unless they were arriving in an ambulance which we’ve been here for almost 3 hours now has not happened. So those ambulances being rerouted to other hospitals. A growing crowd behind me. You can see people are coming here to the place where they know he was taken so they can show that their respects. They can show their love and support for Charlie Kirk and for his family who remain. Right here with me a young woman named Lauren. Hi Lauren. Thank you so much for being here. Lauren was there today at UVU and decided to come here this evening and show up to show her support. Lauren, how are you doing this afternoon? What did you experience today? Yeah, so uh me and my sister um we’re Charlie Kirk like fans, so we’re like super excited to go and just like going to his thing just like in the beginning of the first you could just feel like his spirit and like he was so happy and it’s like sad and just like wrong, completely wrong for someone to get killed for their beliefs of their rights and stuff like that. So after that happened, my sister and I were in the third and fourth of the row or whatever and I didn’t see it, thank goodness, but just like hearing that shot, it was like sort of like unbelieving like how could this like happened like in like Orm or Utah and so happened to anyone that’s just like rot. So, we just evacuated and got out and there was no like direction helping us and stuff and just after this it’s been like really hurtful and I was just like down like looking through like different reels of just how some people are taking this as a joke and they don’t care that this man like this who’s a human like has those rights just like died to this. But afterwards um when we were going through um we decided we wanted to come to here and support Charlie Kirk. We made a poster up for his family. And just like being here, it’s made me feel like more peace and like more calm just like being with people here knowing that there’s still like good in this world and that there’s still like humanity that cares for this man cuz he truly anyone losing like that life or whatever is wrong. And I just feel so bad for his family and just like he’s in they’re in our thoughts and prayers and just like to help them for that. So really healing for you to come here after this traumatic event for you to come and be with others, be with like-minded people and people who are also supporting. No. Yeah, for sure. Which I wouldn’t expect cuz mostly when I’d go to the scenes, I feel like I would feel like I don’t know uncomfortable like everyone’s been like so nice and just like like just feeling super like that comfort and just like that healing through it. Moving forward, what about Charlie will you take forward with you? Yeah. So even though like this was my first day meeting Charlie just like I’ve always wanted to know him and to me just like seeing him today just like so happy and sharing like his connection with Christ that’s really I really connect with him. I love his politics too but like just like his with Christ. So what I really want to take from this today is like to always stand up for your beliefs and just to know like it we should as people we should feel like safe to like say our beliefs and our rights no matter what religion or what we believe in. And so he’s just a an example, a man for me to be courageous and brave and to like always defend like what you believe in. Lauren, thank you so much for chatting with us. A current student at UVU studying to be a therapist here. A growing crowd behind me here at Tempenogus Regional Hospital to say goodbye to the late Charlie Kirk. We’ll be here all evening speaking with more people coming to pay their respects. Reporting live, I’m Sarah Martin, KSL5 News. All right, Sarah, we appreciate you out there. Thank you. Let’s continue our team coverage now with new specialist Andrew Adams. Andrew, I know you are uh from Utah County. This hits close to home and all afternoon we have been hearing from witnesses talking about some some things no one should have to see. It’s been hard. It has been hard and really inconceivable in a place like this. Not just the fact that ORM and Provo very safe safe area, but on top of that just how politically conservative Utah County tends to be and then this happens here. Uh I think that multiple people today have taken note of that. Uh and certainly as we’ve been standing out here, we’ve been tracking the movements of law enforcement and we’ve seen law enforcement all from all kinds of different agencies, people in SWAT uh gear uh sometimes moving quickly, sometimes moving slowly, but uh continuing their investigation through the area. Actually, while we were standing here, we saw police HSI, which is uh Homeland Security investigation. So, we know there’s now federal involvement here with the FBI, also homeland security agents uh in the area. And uh so, they are doing it’s a folk press in terms of an investigation out here in terms of what we’re seeing from federal law enforcement and from local law enforcement. Now, we know we’re in video right now, but if we could turn, I want to take a minute and just point out this car because what we’ve been seeing in the last little while are police going car to car in this parking lot. Basically taking pictures of every individual car that’s left out here, taking pictures of license plates. Uh if it’s a point of interest, then they’ll take more interest. But this car right here, there was a little confusion initially because there was some belief it might be a news photographer vehicle. Turned out not to be the case. But police took extra close paid extra close attention to this uh Chevy. I believe that’s a traverse right there. So unclear why they were interested in that. Eventually they moved on, but you had three officers spending a good oh maybe 5 to 10 minutes taking a look at that vehicle in particular. So they are going car to car, row to row, and we’ll continue to keep you updated on their movements and law enforcement movements in general here at UVU. Deie. All right, Andrew. Thank you. Nice job out there. Now, let’s continue our coverage with uh Daniel Woodruff, who is live outside the campus in Utah Valley University. Daniel, I know you too are also very very familiar with this area of our state and I think it’s safe to say that no one would anticipate this kind of violence on UVU’s campus. Yeah, Die. They call this Happy Valley for a reason. I grew up in Provo, just a few miles to the east from here at Utah Valley University. And this is just a shocking day as people have told us over and over and over. Now, some significant news coming out in just the last little bit. As a result of the shooting, Utah Valley University here will be closed until Monday. All classes, all administrative operations, all events are cancelled until Monday. I wanted to read a short bit of what Utah Valley University put out. They said, “Our hearts go out to his family, Charlie Kirk. As we grieve with our students, faculty, and staff who bore witness to this unspeakable tragedy, UVU campuses will be closed from September 11th through the 14th.” And that’s really one of the major effects of today’s shooting, not only for Charlie Kirk and his family, but there were thousands, we’ve been told, of people that were in this area who watched the shooting happen. Some of them describing the chaotic aftermath to us earlier today. I was in a room fairly close to where it happened and then some people just ran in and yelled active shooter. So we we all just got out. I just started booking at my friend, threw her drink and we just got out of there like as fast as we could. It was terrifying. Uh none of us knew what was going on. And that was really the sentiment. Nobody knew what was happening at first. One witness described it as like a firecracker and then about 3 seconds of confusion and then noticing what had happened and then just running. In fact, I interviewed three people who told me that they left the place where Charlie Kirk was speaking, ran through the UVU fountain on the west side of campus, literally running for their lives. They didn’t know if it was an active shooting situation where others would get shot. In this case, of course, only Charlie Kirk was shot as the news conference that just wrapped up a little bit ago revealed that this was apparently a political assassination with one target and that was Charlie Kirk. And one shot was fired. Certainly a lot of emotions here on UVU campus today. A lot of tears. We saw a lot of sadness and a very somber feeling and eerie feeling right now. It’s a quiet campus that is going to be closed until Monday. Daniel Woodruff live at 5. Yeah, Daniel, those emotions you describe are so understandable and and so obvious in the video as you watch those poor students. Uh, thank you for that report. The governor along with local, state, and federal police just wrapped up a news conference on this shooting. News specialist Dan Rasone attended that conference and joins me now. Dan, they were able to shed some light on several key parts of this investigation. Yeah, that’s correct, Deie. We did hear some uh key parts there of the investigation as you mentioned as far as what the governor had to say and also with the department of public safety and also the FBI all inside this auditorium just about an hour ago or so. But again, still a lot of unanswered questions out there. But we do know this in regards to what has happened here. The governor kind of summed it up really well when he said this is a very dark day in Utah, a very dark day in the nation here as to what happened here. We heard this a little bit. One shot, one victim. They believe that the shooter was up on the roof. We’ve been seeing some of the video being coming in to the station and other places of possibly somebody up on the roof there of this event. We’re talking about an event here that had about 3,000 people or so. According to UVU police chief, he’s saying they had as many as six officers here at this event and some others in plain clothing out in the crowd there. Also, you had Charlie Kirk’s personal security that was there. But again, as you could see from the video that we’ve been uh unfortunately having to see there about him getting shot, none of those securities were right next to him necessarily. They were kind of on his side there. But that one shot being fired and then he drops down to the ground and then there’s ultimate chaos as people are running and trying to get out of that area because you know this is a fear that students are growing up in in this day and age as far as on campus of schools and universities when shots ring out you run. And that’s kind of what happened there. And so this is the case here and this is what the governor had to say in regards to what happened here at UVU today. that is foundational to the formation of our country to our most basic constitutional rights. And when someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened. And the governor did say in regards to the death penalty here in Utah, we he’s saying we do have the death penalty. And so that is something that we’ll be looking at. But again, as far as having the actual shooter in custody right now, that’s the question that we oppose to them, trying to clarify all of that. They said they do have a person of interest in custody right now, and they are still out there canvasing the area. They’re still going to each of the buildings making sure every, you know, inch of this campus is looked at to make sure there’s not somebody else out there that’s involved. But again, one shooter, unfortunately, one victim here and that victim has passed away. I’m Dan Rasco live at 5. Back to you guys in the studio. All right, Dan, thank you for the summary and yes, this is still an active investigation and they do have a tip line for people who may have information. Let’s go now live to Jod Reosa. Jody, you’ve been on the ground there all afternoon talking to people and you just we could hear the shock um and the the disbelief by what they’ve seen today. You are absolutely right, Deanie. Shock, anger, fear, just being scared, not knowing what’s next for them, you know, feeling like I just need to get out of here. However, we have seen stragglers here and we’ve seen law enforcement direct them, you know, very strongly, you need to leave. This is an active investigation. Now, just to let you know where I’m at, I am just in front of the Fulton Library and beyond that is the Liberal Arts Building and then that’s where the venue is behind the liberal arts building. Now, along with all of those feelings that the students are feeling that, you know, Utah County, Utah, the nation is feeling right now. There’s some irony in this as well. I mean, if you take a look right back here behind me, you see Utah County official ballot box. the fact that this is one of the areas that people can submit, you know, their vote for people, no matter what aisle, no matter what side of the aisle politically they are on, they can come here. And, you know, I wasn’t in the actual press conference, but I was listening to it through my earpiece. And UVU officials said, you know, we want to make sure people know this is a place to share ideas. So, this is just this has been an awful day from for them. You know, it’s being coined a dark and tragic day for the entire nation. The other aspect of irony is September is constitutional month. And I actually spoke with the Alpine director of communications, the Alpine School District, and they were celebrating a 9/11 project in Spanish Fork and Utah County. And you know, trying to just understand the depth of the civic history that we have, not only in Utah, but across the nation. And he said, “When we heard this, we were absolutely shocked as well.” Now I asked him, you know, are you going to have school tomorrow? Are you shutting it down because you know the shooters at large? He said it’s going to be business as usual. There’s going to be school at Alpine School District. However, if we get any directives from law enforcement and things change, then we will move quickly as well. I’ll send it back to you. All right, Jody. Thank you. Yeah, this has been a a long day and a hard day for many people who were there on campus. The University of uh Utah Valley University campus is on lockdown and the school’s police say they are still have issued that uh stay in in shelter warning that has not been lifted. So anyone who’s still trapped in the school’s building or still inside, they are asking you to get a police escort before you come out. There is a number to call for that help. 8018638130. That’s 8018638130. And I pray for him and his family. And I pray for everybody that was here to witness this. It’s It’s awful. And I don’t understand why we can’t have something like this. That is truly innocent. More eyewitnesses today shooting at Utah Valley University. Let’s take a little moment now and go to Mike Hedrickk who is on Utah Valley University’s campus. Mike, I know that you have been talking to people at NBC and reporting there for them. This of course has taken a national and and an international interest from in in terms of a news story. It’s consumed the country is what it’s done, Deanie. And everyone is trying to figure out why in the world something like this happened, especially in Utah County, right? A lot of people here especially thinking this happened somewhere else, right? We’ve heard that from people. It happens somewhere else, not here. It can happen anywhere. And I think today is proof of that. And as I spoke with a number of people today, really the common thread between all of them was this is a tragic situation and the whole thing was surreal. And a lot of people are still trying to wrap their heads around that. I’m on the campus right now where you still see a heavy police presence. Not too many people here. Officers have died down as far as the number of them that we see coming in and out of this area. But know this, the presence is still heavy here on UVU’s campus. All right, let’s talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk. Some people don’t know his background and maybe have never heard of him. He actually was a founder of Turning Point USA. That was back in 2012 when he was just 18 years old. He was a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump and attracted young voters using his network and nonprofits to register voters on campuses and churches for Trump in 2024. Kirk frequently traveled to college campuses speaking and taking questions from audience members in arguments that often led to viral videos. Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University was a first of a 14 city fall American comeback tour. Kirk traveled with a private security contingency. He most recently appeared in the Oval Office back in May attending the swearing in ceremony of Judge Janine Piro. Charlie Kirk was 31 years old. He leaves behind his wife Erica and their two young children. It is tragic. There is a vigil tonight for Kirk that is at the state ratunda in the capital there. The vigil starts at 7:00 this evening and the event is hosted by the Utah House of Representatives. Kirk’s Foundation Turning Point USA also released in a statement online today. Let me read that to you so you can see what they had to say here. May he be received into the merciful arms of our loving savior. We ask that everyone keeps his family and loved ones in your prayers. We ask that you please respect their privacy and dignity at this time. So, as we continue on and follow in the investigation, there’s this part of it as well. It’s the tragedy. It’s the heartbreak. It’s the knowing that somebody lost their life that was senseless. There was no need for that. But here we are. And as the governor talked about, country is broke. That was what he was said. And I dare say there’s a lot of people on this campus and probably across the country that believe that very same thing. We’ll see where things go from here. We’ll continue and follow what is happening here on the campus. Deie, yeah, it’s going to take a lot of time and and effort for people to work through everything that’s happened today. Mike, thank you. Now, President Trump reacted to the news of the death by ordering flags to half staff until sunset on September 14th. He also wrote on True Social, “The great and even legendary Charlie Cook is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me. And now he’s no longer with us. Melania, and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica, and family. Charlie, we love you. Here’s the response from former President Joe Biden. There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones. and Senator Mike Lee releasing a statement saying in part, “This murder was a cowardly act of violence, an attack on champions of freedom like Charlie, the students who gathered for civil debate, and all Americans who peacefully strive to save our nation.” Please join me in praying for his wife Erica, and their children. May justice be swift. The University of Utah announced that they will have increased patrols on campus, saying that police officers will be available to speak to students, faculty, and staff who are concerned about these events and safety on campus. There will be additional safety patrols and layers of security present on university events today and for the rest of this week. Utah Senator John Curtis also reacted to the news, saying it’s very personal because it happened in his backyard. I think it’s time for all of us to re-evaluate how we’re talking about issues. I I think that if we’re honest, we’re having conversations within families that are too heated. We’re having conversations among friends that are too heated. And then that obviously escalates as it gets to a broader conversation. It’s not healthy. It’s not who we are. This is why it’s so impactful to me. It’s especially not who we are in Utah and Utah County. And Arizona Senator Mark Kelly gave his reaction to the shooting. It is u, you know, a horrendous thing to see and it happens uh all too often. Um, you know, I’m thinking about him and his, you know, family and, you know, I hope, you know, for a, you know, they makes a recovery from this. Senator Kelly knows firsthand how a shooting affects a family. Back in 2011, his wife, Representative Gabriel Gfords, was shot in the head while at a political event in Arizona. she survived. We’ll have much more live team coverage of Charlie Kirk’s death and the search for the suspect in this shooting coming up at 6:00. Thanks for joining us. This has been a a tough day. We appreciate you being with us and um we will we’re working to gather all the latest information. We will have that coming up at 6:00. In the meantime, download the KSL Plus app to get breaking news updates on this situation sent straight to you. We are live in Orm with more on the shooting when we come back.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been shot in Utah.