A note, a gun and a mother’s conscience led to an arrest in Charlie Kirk’s killing
In the chaotic hours after an assassin’s gunshot rang out at Utah Valley University last Wednesday, Tyler Robinson texted his roommate and romantic partner back home 250 miles away and said, “Drop what you’re doing, look under my keyboard.”
There in their nondescript apartment in the fast-growing conservative Utah city of St. George lay a note from Robinson saying, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it.”
It would take 33 hours and a frantic search that roped in top-ranking Trump administration officials before Robinson (22), was finally apprehended. In the end, it was Robinson’s own mother who recognized her eldest son’s image on the news and began a painstaking series of phone calls that ended with him in custody.
Criminal charges filed on Tuesday portray Robinson as a left-leaning assassin with pro-LGBTQ+ views who spent a week planning a murder that has inflamed America’s political hatreds and led to vows of retribution from the highest echelons of government and even talk of civil war.
But court papers and interviews reveal the wrenching realizations that unfolded in private, as Robinson’s partner and parents in the red-rock deserts of southern Utah realized that the onetime straight-A student and scholarship winner appeared to be the black-clad figure being hunted by law enforcement.
“You weren’t the one who did it right????” Robinson’s partner wrote to him last Wednesday. “I am,” Robinson replied. “I’m sorry.”
Utah prosecutors said that Kirk was targeted “based on his political expression,” but they did not offer a more detailed motive on Tuesday as they charged Robinson with aggravated murder and announced they would seek the death penalty.
Robinson was raised in a Republican family – the accused described his father as “a pretty diehard maga” – but his political views had intensified and moved to the left over the past year, particularly when it came to gay and transgender rights, officials have said.
Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner was transitioning from male to female gender, and Robinson told his family he believed Kirk had been spreading hate.
“I had enough of his hatred,” Robinson wrote to his partner in a text message after the shooting, according to court papers.
Utah officials said that Robinson’s romantic partner had known nothing about any plans to kill Kirk and had been cooperating with investigators. Investigators have not said whether the relationship was a motive in targeting Kirk, an outspoken critic of LGBTQ+ rights.