A suspect has been arrested in southern Utah in connection with the fatal shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, Spencer Cox said on Friday morning, identifying the man as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.
“We got him,” the Utah governor said at a press conference, adding that Robinson was arrested and taken into custody in Washington county, which is close to the state border with Arizona, on Thursday at 10pm local time.
Cox said a family friend of Robinson’s reached out the authorities and told officers that Robinson “confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”.
Robinson was spotted wearing clothing that were consistent with surveillance images and said that investigators have also seen messages he sent via the group chat app Discord that linked him to the shooting, Cox said.
Kirk was shot and killed with a single bullet fired from a distant rooftop while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem. Around 3,000 people had gathered to hear from the 31-year-old, a co-founder of the hard right youth organization Turning Point USA, or to debate him over his characteristic inflammatory public speech and often-extremist views on race, immigration, gender identity and gun rights.
Cox said that family members told investigators that the suspect in the killing, Robinson, had “become more political in recent years” and had mentioned that Kirk was coming to UVU at a prior family dinner.
“They talked about why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had. The family member also stated Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate,” Cox said.
A high-powered Mauser rifle found near the scene of the suspect’s initial escape route contained an unfired bullet that Cox said was marked with the message “hey, fascist, catch!”.
And other casings appeared to reference gaming and online meme culture including “Oh Bella Ciao” – an Italian folk song that originally became an anti-fascist resistance anthem during the second world war and is popularized in some video games – and a homophobic slur: “If you read this, you are gay LMAO [laughing my ass off].”
Cox said that Robinson’s roommate had shown investigators Discord messages he sent which were “affiliated with the contact, Tyler, stating a need to retrieve a rifle from a drop point” and referring to having left the rifle wrapped in a towel.
Cox said Robinson was not a student at UVU and a UVU spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that they had no record of him attending.
The spokesperson told the Guardian that Robinson is currently a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College and that he briefly attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021. Robinson received concurrent enrollment credit through Utah Tech University from 2019 to 2021, while in high school, the spokesperson added.
Concluding the news conference on Friday, Cox said that this “is a very sad day for our country, a terrible day for the state of Utah, but I’m grateful that at this moment, we have an opportunity to bring closure to this very dark chapter in our nation’s history”.
Earlier on Friday morning, Donald Trump, in a live TV studio interview with the Fox & Friends morning show, said he had heard the news of an arrest moments before going on air.
Related: A quiet Utah town reckons with Charlie Kirk’s shooting: ‘Nothing like this has happened here’
“I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody,” the US president said.
Trump believes Kirk’s killer should receive the death penalty, echoing earlier calls for that from Cox, a Republican.
During the intense search for the shooter, investigators and the public had been poring over video officially released, showing the suspect running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the building and dropping to the ground.
The FBI had offered up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person, having on Wednesday detained but then released without charge two other persons “of interest”.
The death of Kirk – a close ally of Trump – has drawn renewed attention to the escalating threat of political violence in the United States which, in the last several years, has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation from political leaders.
Cox said on Thursday, “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online and encouraged the public to ignore it.
Trump, when asked further in his Friday TV interview about how “we fix the country” or “come back together” after Kirk’s shooting, said that he “couldn’t care less” and launched into partisan accusations.
He added: “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime, worried about the border,” adding: “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”
On Thursday evening, Kirk’s casket had arrived in his home state of Arizona aboard Air Force Two on Thursday evening, accompanied by JD Vance, who has lionized Kirk. The vice-president’s wife, Usha, stepped off the plane with Kirk’s widow, Erika.
Turning Point USA and Kirk’s family home are in Arizona.
Kirk was a provocateur and a divisive figure who is credited with helping bring young people, especially men, into the US president’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement. He was also known for bigoted views, calling for a total ban on transgender healthcare, describing immigration from Muslim countries as “civilizational suicide”, and peddling conspiracy theories about Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
Kirk’s killing drew bipartisan condemnation of the rise in political violence in the US.
Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska told NBC News that he wished Trump would unite the country after the shooting, “but he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger”.
“I have to remind people, we had Democrats killed in Minnesota too, right?” Bacon added. This referred to the murder of Minnesota’s former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June by a gunman who severely wounded two others and had a hitlist of 45 people, all Democrats. Mike Lee, a Utah senator, spread disinformation about those murders, while condemning Kirk’s killing this week.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed reporting