Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, Turning Point USA founder and close ally to Donald Trump, died Wednesday following a sniper attack as he spoke to a large gathering of students at Utah Valley University. He was 31.
Campus officials initially said in an alert sent to students that a suspect was in custody, but later reversed that report. University spokeswoman Ellen Treanor told the New York Times Kirk was shot about 20 minutes after he began speaking at noon, and was targeted from the Losee Center, a building about 200 yards away. A man taken into custody was not the shooter, who was reportedly still at large, Treanor told reporters as the FBI joined campus and state police in the manhunt. It was later reported that person was arrested on obstruction of justice. In a press conference late on Wednesday afternoon, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said a new person of interest was in custody but did not make it clear if the person detained was the shooter.
Kirk was speaking into a microphone under a tent labeled “American Comeback” – the name of his national campus tour – and “Prove Me Wrong,” the catch-phrase of his signature events in which he engaged directly with high school and college students across the United States, inviting them to challenge his viewpoints. He was mid-sentence, answering a question about trans involvement in mass shootings in America, and had just answered “Counting or not counting gang violence?” when a shot rang out and appeared to strike him in the neck or upper chest, according to several videos posted on X.
Close-up video footage showed Kirk violently flinch as he was struck, and blood began to flow as he contorted backward. The crowd of about 1,000 students immediately reacted, shouting and turning to run.
Initial media reports said Kirk had been stabilized and was receiving blood at a nearby hospital. His death was announced at 2:40 p.m. by President Trump, who wrote on Truth Social: “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 Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”
Kirk’s spokesman, Andrew Kolvet, confirmed his death minutes later.
Born in 1993 in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois, Kirk began his political involvement as a teenager and quickly rose to prominence in conservative circles, promoting free markets, limited government and individual liberty. In 2012, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA with his mentor, conservative activist William Montgomery, and shepherded the organization’s turn from university stump speeches to a sprawling, multifaceted national operation that has become the country’s most prominent conservative youth organization.
Kirk was an author, the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast and radio show and a frequent media commentator and conference speaker. But his freewheeling conversations with students – the likes of which he was holding Wednesday – became his signature mode of engagement.
In the early goings, Kirk would sit alone at a table with a “Prove Me Wrong” sign and a microphone; as his rhetorical clashes with liberal students began to go viral, he drew ever larger crowds, steadily growing to become the “American Comeback” events like the one he was hosting at Utah Valley University. His events drew both supporters and detractors, the latter of whom were encouraged to ask questions and engage in debate.
Unabashedly Christian and pro-life, Kirk firmly pushed back on hot-button issues like gender identity, LGBTQ rights, DEI and Black Lives Matter, and wrote “The MAGA Doctrine” in 2020, which outlined his vision of Donald Trump’s political movement. He had no official role at the White House, but was highly influential there, helping Trump vet prospective appointees with an eye toward their loyalty to the president.
Though he strove to engage respectfully with students and critics who challenged his worldview, his hard-line stance on political and cultural matters made him a highly polarizing figure, drawing strong support from conservatives – Trump and Vice President JD Vance included – and passionate opposition from critics, who saw him as nationalistic, racist, homophobic and intensely divisive.
Indeed, Kirk’s views were hard-right on virtually every matter, at times veering into conspiracy theories and misinformation. He promoted Trump’s 2020 election-fraud claims and led a “Stop the Steal” effort in Arizona; was briefly banned from Twitter for saying hydroxycholoroquine was “100% effective” in treating the COVID virus; and was an open climate-change denialist, saying repeatedly that human activity has no significant impact on global conditions.
Kirk was also a strong 2nd Amendment supporter. During during a Turning Point USA “Faith” event on April 5, 2023, when asked about mass shootings and gun violence in schools, Kirk said: “You’re not going to get gun deaths to zero … I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal.”
In 2021, Kirk married Erika Frantzve, who won the Miss Arizona USA pageant in 2012 and went on to become a podcaster and businesswoman. The couple had their first child, a daughter, in August 2022, and a son in May of 2024.
