By SHAWN COHEN and WILL POTTER, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER and RACHEL SHARP, CRIME CORRESPONDENT
Published: 13:49 BST, 12 September 2025 | Updated: 15:58 BST, 12 September 2025
The suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination has been identified as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident.
Law enforcement sources told Daily Mail that Robinson was taken into custody as the alleged assassin who killed Kirk at a rally at Utah Valley University in Utah on Wednesday.
The alleged killer confessed to his father Matt, a member of law enforcement, sources told Daily Mail. His father then contacted authorities and secured his son before he could be taken into custody.
His mother, Amber Robinson, works for Intermountain Support Coordination Services, a company contracted by the state of Utah to help disabled people receive care.
Robinson was a student at Utah State University on a scholarship but attended for only one semester in 2021, insiders confirmed to Daily Mail.
The family’s social media profiles show Robinson, who has two younger brothers, often enjoying family vacations and sharing smiling selfies, including one of his mother celebrating her ‘genius’ son getting into college.
Robinson was taken into custody around 11pm local time in southern Utah on Thursday night. He lives in a $600,000 six-bedroom home in Washington, Utah – about 260 miles south of Kirk’s assassination in Orem.
Authorities said at a press conference on Thursday night that Robinson will face the death penalty if convicted.
The suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination has been identified as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident
Robinson has two younger brothers, and lives in a $600,000 six-bedroom home in Washington, Utah – about 260 miles south of Kirk’s assassination in Orem
Robinson was a student at Utah State University, insiders confirmed to Daily Mail
Officials released images of the person of interest who was sought in the manhunt, seen wearing a black t-shirt with a bald eagle flying across an American flag
Kirk, seen moments before he was shot, was assassinated Wednesday on the UVU campus in Orem, Utah as he held a Turning Point USA event
At a press conference on Friday morning, Utah Governor Spencer Cox began his remarks by delcaring: ‘We got him.’
He said that investigators learned from Robinson’s family that he had become more political in recent times, and had recently expressed his dislike for Kirk, describing him to his family as ‘full of hate.’
Cox said that casings from the weapon used to kill Kirk were found to have several anti-fascist messages engraved on them, including one referencing the WW2 Italian anti-fascist song Bella Ciao.
One engraving read ‘Hey Fascists, Catch!’ – next to an up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol and three down arrow symbols – another read ‘OwO’, and a third read ‘If You Read This You Are Gay LMAO’, Cox said.
The governor added that Robinson’s roommate helped investigators by showing messages on Discord where the alleged killer talked about retrieving a rifle from a drop point, leaving the rifle in a bush, and references to engraved bullets and a scope.
In one image from Robinson’s mother’s social media from 2017, he was seen wearing a Donald Trump costume to Halloween.
Other images also show Robinson using guns in his childhood, including one where he was posing with an M2 Browning 50. calibre machine gun.
Two people had been arrested on Tuesday amid chaotic scenes following Kirk’s assassination, but both were later released as they were found to not be the killer
Kirk was one of the most prominent conservative voices in the nation and was a close ally of President Trump and his administration
The MAGA star, wearing a white t-shirt, was sitting inside a tented gazebo taking questions from attendees.
In the moments before the shot rang out, Kirk was asked how many mass shooters there had been over the past 10 years.
‘Counting or not counting gang violence?’ the commentator said, before lowering his microphone.
He was shot less than a second later.
Screams were heard across the crowd of young people as those closest to Kirk rushed to his aid.
UVU officials said the shot was fired from the top of the Losee Center, about 200 yards away from where Kirk was sitting on the college campus.
Eerie footage showed someone on a rooftop just moments before conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead.
They initially took an elderly man into custody who turned out not to be the shooter, police said.
Kirk, 31, was married and had two children
Sophie Anderson, 45, who was standing 100 feet from the stage when the shooting happened.
As chaos ensued, she told Daily Mail that she almost got trampled as she ran off into the food court, where she hid in a closet.
‘The second it happened, I knew it was a gunshot,’ said Anderson, who was joined at the event by her boss Phil Lyman, a former Utah state representative who was handing out hats on stage with Kirk just five minutes earlier.
‘He was shot in the neck and just fell over and he was just a fountain of blood,’ she said. ‘They carried him off. All these kids are just falling apart and bawling.’
Kirk leaves behind his wife, Erika, and a daughter, three, and son, 16 months. The couple celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary in May.
Previously named on Forbes 30 under 30 list, Kirk was the youngest speaker at the 2016 Republican National Convention as well as the opening speaker at the 2020 RNC.
Kirk, who had millions of social media followers, co-founded the non-profit Turning Point USA in 2012 as a teenager, which he dubbed a ‘national student movement.’
Its mission is to ‘identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.’
The arrest comes after a manhunt for the assassin stretched out to over a day and a half
Turning Point and Kirk have played a starring role in Republican politics ever since he enthusiastically backed Donald Trump in 2016.
Kirk served as a personal aide to Donald Trump Jr during a general election campaign, and then in 2024, the non-profit increased their staff from 400 to 1,000 to ‘chase the vote’ in swing states.
Kirk was also one of the earliest advocates for Vice President JD Vance, then a junior senator for Ohio, to serve as Trump’s running mate.
‘I’m going to put my power behind JD for whatever I can,’ Kirk said.
‘That is a very good chapter two to the MAGA story that we’re writing.’
The non-profit also strove to encourage the restoration of ‘traditional American values like patriotism, respect for life, liberty, family, and fiscal responsibility.’
Kirk garnered much of his online notoriety for his ‘prove me wrong’ table, and in 2024 alone saw 15 billion views across multiple social media platforms.
In the last year, dedicated around 200 hours at more than 60 colleges for his ‘prove me wrong’ events.
He was well known among young voters for his ‘populist nationalist’ worldviews on issues such as immigration, gender and politics.
President Trump led tributes to Kirk after he was shot dead on Wednesday
In his efforts to educate his young base saw Kirk found the Turning Point Academy, which provides a ‘pro-American’ education to more than 250 partners.
He even turned to faith and began Turning Point Faith, which collaborates with more than 3,700 congregations encouraging ‘biblical citizenship,’ the outlet reported.
His work was heavily involved with students at colleges and university’s across the country, as Turning Point supports student body president races and recruits precinct leadership teams.
In 2026, the non-profit had goals to renew or begin 1,000 college chapters and 1,650 high school chapters under the name ‘Club America.’
But Kirk’s work within the MAGA realm was not confined to Turning Point, as he also authored four books and has been featured on-screen and in writing across multiple media outlets.
The shooting comes amid a spike in political violence in the United States across all parts of the ideological spectrum.
The attacks include the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband at their house in June, the firebombing of a Colorado parade to demand Hamas release hostages, and a fire set at the house of Pennsylvania’s governor, who is Jewish, in April.
The most notorious of these events is the shooting of Trump during a campaign rally last year.
Utah governor Charles Cox said on X: ‘I just got off the phone with President Trump. Working with the FBI and Utah law enforcement, we will bring to justice the individual responsible for this tragedy,’ Cox wrote on X.
‘Abby and I are heartbroken. We are praying for Charlie’s wife, daughter, and son,’ Cox added.