Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, while speaking in front of a large crowd as part of a campus speaking tour.
Kirk had just started taking audience questions at his event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah, when he was struck by gunfire.
The stop at Utah Valley University was to be the opening event in his “American Comeback Tour.”
President Donald Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday afternoon, announced Kirk had died.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote.
“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!”
Utah Valley University junior Aspen Brown told KSL that she was standing to the right of Kirk, about 15 feet away from his stand, when she heard a gunshot. Then pandemonium swept over the crowd.
“He was two questions in and then we heard the shot,” she said afterward, still shaken. “People were trying to run out when they heard that.”
Michael Andersen, a professor at UVU, told KSL he was about 50 feet from where Kirk was sitting when he heard what he initially believed was a firework going off.
“Then people started running out of the amphitheater, and I saw some people trying to get up out of the terraces,” Andersen told KSL.
The UVU professor said that, only as he was walking away, someone said they saw the moment Kirk was hit.
Another student at UVU, identified only as Ethan, told Fox 13 that he heard a shot and saw “a wave of blood come out of his chest.” After that, Ethan said he dived to the ground.
“I had a couple of people trample me, actually, so it was pretty horrific,” Ethan said.
Former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican who attended Kirk’s event, told Fox News he heard one shot and then saw Kirk fall back.
“As soon as I saw Charlie go back, you realize that it was a shot,” Chaffetz said. “It wasn’t as if there was a whole bunch of gunfire. It was one shot.”
Footage reviewed by The Epoch Times showed six men carrying Kirk out from behind his pop-up tent to a black SUV waiting nearby, while a police officer stood guard, telling people rushing in the same direction to stop and back up.
This is a developing report and will be updated with additional details.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By Ryan Morgan
