manhunt for killer under way

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Utah Valley University campus was evacuated, and armed officers went door to door in the Orem neighbourhood surrounding the campus as helicopters searched from the air.

Robert Bohls, the bureau’s special agent in charge, said: “As soon as we heard about the shooting, special agents and personnel from the Salt Lake City field office responded immediately.

“We have full resources devoted to this investigation, including tactical, operational, investigative and intelligence. To be clear, the FBI will fully support and co-lead this investigation alongside our partners.”

Charlie Kirk is being mourned in Moscow, where the conservative activist was popular for his anti-Nato stance, for blaming President Zelensky for the war in Ukraine and for his argument that Crimea should be part of Russia.

“Prayers for Charlie. Voices of Light will not be silenced,” Kirill Dmitriev, President Putin’s special envoy on foreign investment and economic co-operation, wrote on X in response to a tweet by JD Vance, the US vice-president.

He added in a follow-up: “Our prayers are with his family.”

Dmitriev wrote on Wednesday — before Kirk was confirmed dead — that he was “one of the most prominent conservative leaders, who was well known for his positive comments about Russia and his calls for dialogue. This incident has significance not just for American politics but for the whole world: an assassination attempt on a person who stands for common sense and against hysteria demonstrates the deep divide in the United States.”

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said Charlie Kirk’s killing was “a blow to everything western civilisation stands for: open discourse, robust debate and peaceful dissent”.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said that “political violence should have no place in society”.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said: “I regarded him as a friend. We got on incredibly well and I’m desperately sad.

“This is just awful and don’t underestimate the reaction to this in America. It’s going to be huge. It’s a very, very dark day for American democracy, for western democracy, and for free speech.”

Sir Keir Starmer said Kirk’s death was “heartbreaking” in a post on X, and that “a young family has been robbed of a father and a husband”.

The prime minister added that we must be “free to debate openly and freely without fear — there can be no justification for political violence”.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, a student shot two of his peers at a suburban Denver high school before turning the gun on himself.

One student remained in critical condition, while another had non-life-threatening injuries. The shooter, a 16-year-old male, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The handgun shooting was reported around 12.30pm at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, about 30 miles west of Denver in the Rocky Mountain foothills.

An American political pundit has been fired from his job with the broadcaster MSNBC after suggesting on air that Charlie Kirk’s “awful words” led to his murder.

“You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place,” Matthew Dowd, a senior political analyst, said on Katy Tur Reports on Wednesday.

Dowd’s comments prompted widespread backlash and an apology from the president of MSNBC, Rebecca Kutler.

“During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable,” Kutler said in a statement.

“We apologise for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise.”

Dowd, a former Republican adviser and election strategist, apologised in a post on Bluesky, adding “let me be clear, I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack”.

Charlie Kirk had been a consistent advocate for the US Constitution’s Second Amendment — or the right to bear arms. He had acknowledged that deaths were inevitable as a consequence of this right.

In 2023, he said: “You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel.

“I think it’s worth it. 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,” Kirk said at a Turning Point USA event.

Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012 along with the conservative activist Bill Montgomery.

Bob McEwen, a close friend of Kirk and board member of Turning Point USA, told Times Radio that Kirk was solely responsible for the upturn in conservative support among 18 to 25-year-olds.

“He really has impacted our nation and the cause [conservatism] and the president relied on him as people across the country have,” he told Kait Borsay as the news of Kirk’s death broke.

“I believe that he and no one else had a great impact on Donald Trump choosing JD Vance as his running mate.”

Kirk’s appearance at Utah Valley University rally was meant to be the first appearance on a 15-stop tour around the country, during which he has previously asked students and guests to “prove me wrong” in debate-style events.

In the moments before he was shot, social media videos appear to show Kirk answering a question about mass shootings.

A member of the audience asked Kirk: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?” Kirk replied: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”

A single shot rang out and Kirk appeared to fall back into his chair. Trump announced about two hours later that he had died.

Who is the most influential young person on the right in America? For a few years now, the answer has been Charlie Kirk (Katy Balls writes).

After dropping out of college, to his parents’ dismay, the activist made a career touring campuses across America debating young liberals through Turning Point USA, the conservative youth movement he founded in 2012.

A staple of Trump’s world and the digital sphere, Kirk’s death at the age of 31 on Wednesday, after being shot at a student event in Utah, will send shock waves across America. “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”

Read in full: Who was Charlie Kirk?

On Capitol Hill in Washington, an attempt to observe a moment of silence for Kirk on the floor of the US House of Representatives degenerated into shouting and finger-pointing.

The Speaker, Mike Johnson, interrupted a series of votes and requested a pause for a moment of prayer for the father of two and his family.

A brief moment of silence was then observed, but when Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, asked to lead a formal spoken prayer, Democrats jeered loudly, and some of them could be heard noting angrily that congressional Republicans had all but ignored a school shooting earlier in the day.

Accusations of blame and arguments over gun laws continued until the Speaker managed to restore order.

President Trump recorded a video message from the Oval Office, where he vowed his administration would track down the suspect.

“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organisations that fund it and support it,” the president said.

“It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree … for years those on the radical left have compared wonderful human beings like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.

“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in this country today. And it must stop right now.”

Trump blamed the attack on “radical left political violence”, which he also said was behind the shooting that nearly killed him during his presidential campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, as well as the murder of “a healthcare executive” in New York City. This was probably a reference to the UnitedHealthcare chief who was shot in December.

Trump did not mention the politically motivated murder of Minnesota’s Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in June.

Police suspect that a lone gunman fired the single shot that killed Kirk from a rooftop on the campus, about 200 yards from the outdoor rally at Utah Valley University campus in the town of Orem, which was attended by about 3,000 people.

However, there was still no suspect in custody as of Wednesday night. The gunman remains “at large”, Beau Mason, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, said.

State police issued a statement on Wednesday night saying that two men had been detained but both were subsequently released.

The university said that the first suspect arrested was not a student. The second “person of interest” was arrested later in the afternoon and questioned by police, but released from custody on Wednesday night without charge.

Tributes to Charlie Kirk came from across the political spectrum.

“There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now,” Joe Biden said on X. “Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, said she was “deeply disturbed” by the shooting, and Barack Obama, the former president, condemned it as an act of “despicable violence”.

President Trump has called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom” and blamed the attack on “radical left political violence” in a video posted on his social media site Truth Social.

He ordered “all American flags” to be lowered to half-mast until Sunday evening at 6pm, in honour of a “truly great American patriot”.

Announcing Kirk’s death, the president had earlier posted: “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, 31, was shot in the neck as he answered students’ questions at a university rally in Utah on Wednesday afternoon. He died in the hours afterwards. The Utah Valley University campus was put on lockdown for a number of hours as the local area was searched by police.

By Wednesday evening the university said that the campus was “all clear” with no threat, and would remain closed until Monday amid the continuing investigation.

A manhunt is still under way for the killer of Charlie Kirk, the influential right-wing podcaster and political activist who played a key role in President Trump’s election.

Although two people were arrested, they have been released, meaning the murderer is still at large, more than 12 hours after the shooting.