Arizonans mourn Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk outside of the Turning Point USA headquarters on September 10, 2025 in Phoenix. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
The Arizona state flag flies at half-staff outside of the Turning Point USA headquarters to honor Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025, in Phoenix.(Photo by Sydney Lovan/Cronkite News)
Shane Besore, a Charlie Kirk supporter, is emotional during an interview outside of the Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix on Sept. 10, 2025. Kirk, the CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed at an event in Utah. (Photo by Sydney Lovan/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX — Shane Besore drove up at 2 p.m. Wednesday to the Turning Point USA headquarters with his head down and parked in a gravel lot.
A handful of others had already arrived at the headquarters of the organization Charlie Kirk cofounded to mourn and pay their respects to the right-wing media personality who was shot and killed at an event in Utah hours earlier.
Besore walked in a solemn silence, shoulders slumped, holding a red “Make America Great Again” hat. At the entrance, he placed the hat on a metal post, as a makeshift memorial grew.
He walked back, eyes filled with tears, leaving behind the hat he filled with notes and Bible verses dedicated to Kirk’s family and the Turning Point staff.
Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking at a student event at Utah Valley University. He was rushed to a hospital and later died.
Besore wasn’t alone. Other grief-ridden followers brought flowers to the headquarters. One man hung a hat he purchased from Kirk in Arizona.
“I was watching on every single platform possible and just wrote a bunch of Bible verses in there to encourage the TP USA staff,” Besore said, his eyes welling with tears. “Erica, his wife, especially, I have all the notes written in the top of the hat and in the bottom of the hat, and thank you to Charlie,”
Not only were people in grief, they were in shock.
“We just live in a very strange society right now,” said Andrea Serrano, another Arizona resident at the group’s offices.
Serrano said she admired Kirk for his courage and his outspoken nature, promoting the conservative voice. She visited Turning Point headquarters mostly because of her son, a college student who’d been inspired by Kirk, she said.
“I think what’s going to happen now is there’s going to be a lot of young men and young women who have these views that Charlie had that are probably going to start speaking up,” she said.
Micah Barnett wasn’t a follower of Kirk, but he wasn’t happy about the killing, he said.
“As a citizen, I may not believe everything that has to do with the conservative point that he portrays, but I’m just concerned as a citizen of what our country is coming to nowadays,” Barnett said. “I see all the violent actions, whether it’s against Donald Trump or the Minnesota politicians and now Charlie Kirk.”
Barnett, who is 20, said he wished political discussions were more open and less polarizing.
“It’s very concerning to grow up in a country that’s becoming more and more divided amongst itself,” he said.
The Kirk assassination wasn’t the first in recent months.
In June, Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot and killed. In December 2024, Luigi Mangione shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
President Donald Trump narrowly survived an attack in July 2024 when a bullet grazed his ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Acts of political violence have been perpetrated – and felt – on both sides of the aisle.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol hoping to overturn his defeat to President Joe Biden. The same day, pipe bombs were found at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee offices in Washington.
In response to Kirk’s death, Trump ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff through Sunday. The flags outside Turning Point headquarters were lowered shortly after the news of his death was announced, moments after Besore hung his MAGA hat.
The ASU Turning Point USA chapter canceled a meeting scheduled for Wednesday night.
The chapter has a controversial history with the university. In 2023, two members attacked a queer ASU professor. ASU President Michael Crow also asked Kirk to remove ASU professors from Turning Point’s “professor watchlist” in 2023, saying the list “resulted in antisemiitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic attacks” on ASU professors.
Kirk still made campus appearances after the controversies. He visited the university a year ago, stumping with Kari Lake during her failed bid for the U.S. Senate.
In recent months, Turning Point called for Arizona GOP chairwoman Gina Swoboda to step down after she urged more oversight of state-provided school vouchers.
Regardless, Swoboda said she was unnerved by the killing.
“Words cannot describe the shock and horror I felt today when I learned of the senseless and tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University,” she said in a statement.
Besore credited Kirk’s activism for prompting him to vote for Trump in the last three presidential elections. Conservatism, he said, lost its best spokesman when Kirk died.
“I pray for Erica,” he said. “I pray for his two kids.”
“No one,” he added, “should have to do anything like that to try to prove their point.”