FBI releases image of person of interest

Investigators believe that the suspect may have used the screwdriver to disassemble and reassemble the rifle to avoid detection.

The gun was found in a wooded area outside of Orem, Utah.

The FBI has released images of a person suspected of involvement in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk.

The young white male is wearing a black sweatshirt with what appears to be an eagle and a US flag, sunglasses, a cap, jeans and white trainers.

Charlie Kirk was a fierce defender of conservative values on social media and in his daily podcast, where he would often debate students on issues like faith, climate change and the right to bear arms.

Speaking at an event in 2023 at the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church in Utah, Kirk said that gun deaths every year were an acceptable price to pay for the right to own firearms.

“It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment,” he said. “That is a prudent deal. No one talks about that.”

Kirk was also known for scepticism over the Covid-19 pandemic, and promoted false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Mike Lee, the Republican Utah senator and a friend of Charlie Kirk, described his death as “truly tragic”.

The two men were speaking “very regularly, sometimes several times a day”, he said.

Lee added that the shooting also “hits home particularly heavy with me” because it happened at Utah Valley University, a few miles from where he grew up and near where he lives.

Lee said he has attended events at the university since he was a teenager. “And this is a safe place. Not the kind of place where you expect something like this to happen. It’s truly tragic.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York, said she had postponed a rally in North Carolina this weekend after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Asked whether she had rescheduled the event due to security concerns or out of respect for the conservative activist, she told reporters: “I think it’s both.”

Ocasio-Cortez said she tried to hold all of her political appearances indoors, adding that “the nature of escalation has been gradually increasing for quite some time”.

“Prove Me Wrong” read the signs on the canopy under which Charlie Kirk sat in a sunny campus courtyard in central Utah. It was the signature slogan for his wildly popular — and frequently widely vilified — American Comeback college tour.

Kirk, 31, a college dropout turned mega Maga media star of the modern American right, would sit, microphone in hand, while students vied to puncture his conservative certainties with opposing questions and arguments.

These were not Socratic exercises in truth-seeking. They were clever propaganda from a clever young man; articulate and combative, adept at winning debating points over hostile opponents. When exchanges with students were subsequently posted on his social media sites, they would often be edited to make it seem like he had won all the arguments even when he hadn’t.

• Read Gerard Baker’s comment in full

President Trump said he had been briefed on the manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer, and would speak with the conservative activist’s family on Thursday afternoon.

“They have a virtual manhunt out there. So we’ll see what happens. We hope you get them,” Trump told media after a 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon. “You don’t replace a Charlie Kirk. He was unique,” he added.

Earlier, JD Vance, the vice-president, cancelled an appearance at a 9/11 memorial in Washington to travel to Utah.

A state department official has said the US will “take action” against “foreigners” who are “praising, rationalising, or making light of” Charlie Kirk’s assassination on social media.

Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, wrote on X: “In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.

“I have been disgusted to see some on social media praising, rationalising, or making light of the event, and have directed our consular officials to undertake appropriate action. Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the state department can protect the American people.”

Stephen Miller, a senior Trump adviser, has said a “wicked” ideology was leading “always, inevitably and wilfully, to violence”.

Miller posted on X: “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.” He said posts “reveling” in the killing of Charlie Kirk with “glee”, including from government employees, were evidence of this doctrine at work.

He added that this ideology “looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth” and that the “fate of millions” depended on its defeat.

Authorities were reported to have found ammunition etched with “expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology” inside a rifle that is believed to have been used to shoot Charlie Kirk, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The FBI said at a press conference that they had recovered a bolt-action rifle that had been discarded by the suspected assassin in a wooded area.

The .30 calibre rifle was found wrapped in a towel with three unspent rounds in the magazine, with writing engraved on them, according to the Journal who cited an internal law enforcement bulletin and a source familiar with the investigation.

Kirk had been discussing mass shootings involving transgender people at Utah Valley University when he was struck by a single shot from long range. The person he was speaking to has not been identified.

Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, paid tribute to Charlie Kirk during a speech commemorating the 9/11 anniversary at the Pentagon in Washington.

Hegseth said that the “price of freedom” for Americans remained “eternal vigilance”.

“The life, example, and even death of Christ follower and American patriot Charlie Kirk gives me hope,” he said. “Sheer courage no matter the arena.”

Hegseth continued: “Charlie, we love you, we know that you have heard the Lord’s words. Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The mother of a “person of interest” in the Charlie Kirk manhunt has said that her son admired the late conservative activist.

Zachariah Qureshi, 25, attended an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday where Kirk was shot dead. He was questioned by the FBI — one of two so-called “subjects” who were later cleared of any involvement.

Juliette Qureshi, his mother, told NBC News that her son had previously attended a leadership conference hosted by Turning Point USA, the student group founded by Kirk.

After her son’s name was linked to the shooting, he received threats online, she said.
Qureshi said their family are “devastated for Charlie Kirk’s family”.

President Trump has announced that he will posthumously award Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour, at a September 11 memorial at the Pentagon.

“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people.

“Our prayers are with his wonderful wife, Erika, and his beautiful children. Fantastic people they are. We miss him greatly yet I have no doubt that Charlie’s voice and the courage he put into the hearts of countless people, especially young people, will live on.”

Investigators in Utah have released several new details about the killing of Charlie Kirk during a press conference:

• They tracked the subject’s movements through stairwells and up to and across the roof from where he fired the fatal shot
• After the shooting, officials tracked the killer’s movements as they ran across a rooftop, jumped and fled to a nearby neighbourhood
• They have recovered a high-powered bolt-action rifle, believed to be the murder weapon, in a wooded area where the shooter fled
• They have recovered a footwear impression, a palm print and forearm imprints from the suspect
• They have images of the shooter, which are being analysed, and are appealing for local residents to check personal surveillance footage
• The suspect appears to be “of college age”

Robert Bohls, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the Charlie Kirk case, said they had recovered a firearm they believe was used in the shooting; a bolt-action rifle. The weapon was found in a wooded area where the shooter had fled, and was being forensically examined by the FBI.

Bohls said agents had also found footprints believed to have been left by the shooter.

Beau Mason, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, told a news conference that the authorities have tracked the suspect’s movements prior to the shooting and in the moments afterwards.

He said the suspect arrived on campus at 11.52am local time, about half an hour before the shooting.

After firing a single shot from the building of a roof, the suspect jumped off and left through a residential neighbourhood. Mason said “good video footage of this individual”.

He said they would not release the imagery while they work to identify the suspect through facial recognition technology.

Mason added that the “college age” suspect was able to blend into the student crowd, indicating he appeared to be in his early twenties.

They are searching surveillance cameras from the area around the Utah Valley University campus.

Beau Mason, the commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, told a news conference that Charlie Kirk’s body was moved to the office of the medical examiner on Wednesday night for an autopsy.

He said the authorities hope to release his remains to his family later on Thursday.

A close friend of Charlie Kirk’s has claimed that inflammatory rhetoric from some politicians and media figures may have contributed to his assassination.

Hal Lambert, a Republican donor and the founder and CEO of Point Bridge Capital, told Times Radio’s Andrew Neil certain elements of “the left” had demonised Kirk, President Trump and Elon Musk as “Nazis”.

“When you do those kinds of things, you have people who take that literally and try to commit violence based on that. That rhetoric is really, dangerous rhetoric,” said Lambert.

“They certainly have a right to do it, but these are not just average citizens using that term. These are politicians that are referring to Donald Trump as Nazi. These are media hosts referring to Trump and Charlie Kirk as a Nazi. They’ve attacked Charlie relentlessly, and the outcome is what we’ve seen. It’s devastating.”

Point Bridge Capital offers a Maga ETF, which allows people “to invest in companies that align with [their] Republican political beliefs”.

Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, wrote that she was “devastated” by Charlie Kirk’s death in a tribute posted on X.

Trump, who is married to the president’s son Eric and is a Fox News host and former Republican National Committee co-chair, wrote: “Shocked. Numb. Devastated. And utterly heartbroken for Charlie’s young family. You can feel his beautiful spirit in this picture, and it’s how I will always remember him. Charlie, you changed the world — you will be so deeply missed, my friend.”

Kirk was a close confidante and friend to the president and his family.

A Republican congresswoman has urged social media executives to remove videos of Charlie Kirk’s murder from their sites.

Anna Paulina Luna, a close friend of Kirk’s, made the appeal to Elon Musk, the owner of X; Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive; and TikTok in a post on X.

“He has a family, young children, and no one should be forced to relive this tragedy online,” Luna, from Florida, wrote.

“These are not the only graphic videos of horrifying murders circulating — at some point, social media begins to desensitise humanity. We must still value life.”

Graphic videos began circulating on social media shortly after the shooting.

The FBI and the Utah Department of Public Safety are due to hold a press conference at 9am on Thursday (2pm BST) to provide an update on the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

According to one retired FBI agent, the suspect appears to have chosen a rooftop from where they could make a quick escape and be miles away within minutes.

The suspect fired a single shot from the rooftop of the Losee Centre, around 130 metres from where Kirk was speaking to a large crowd of university students.

“If you come off that roof — and I’ve seen the drone footage of this — there’s an open-air parking lot behind that building,” former FBI agent James Gagliano told Fox & Friends.

“This is a big concern because this person, within three to five minutes of that shot going off, that person could have been in a vehicle on his way out and miles and miles away,” he said.

JD Vance, the American vice-president, posted a eulogy to his friend Charlie Kirk on X on Thursday.

In the post, Vance said the pair first crossed paths in 2017 when Kirk showed him “a moment of kindness”, beginning “a friendship that lasted until today”.

Throughout his political career, Vance says, “Charlie was there for me”.

“Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives. When others were right, he learned from them. When he was right — as he usually was — he was generous. With Charlie, the attitude was never, ‘I told you so’,” Vance wrote.

He noted Kirk’s strong Christian faith and love for his family.

“Charlie died doing what he loved: discussing ideas. He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions … He exemplified a foundational virtue of our Republic: the willingness to speak openly and debate ideas.”

Vance ended his tribute by saying: “You ran a good race, my friend. We’ve got it from here.”

JD Vance, the American vice-president, will visit Salt Lake City, Utah, on Thursday to meet the family of Charlie Kirk, a source familiar with the plans told the AFP news agency.

Vance was originally meant to travel to New York City to mark the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks with his wife Usha Vance.

Kirk’s widow, Erika, with whom he had two young children, aged three and one, has so far not made a public statement.

On May 20 this year, Charlie Kirk addressed the Oxford Union, using his “debate me” style to speak directly on issues such as abortion, the “toxic social contagion” of the trans movement and the “cancer” of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

“Has Donald Trump gone too far?” he asked rhetorically. “The truth is this: If you dislike the West and if you hate the West’s values, if you think the West is evil fundamentally and deserves to be destroyed, then anything Donald Trump does, basically, short of surrender will be too far for you.”

During his speech he mentioned Lucy Connolly, a British woman who was jailed after admitting inciting racial hatred with an inflammatory post on X after the murders of three young girls in Southport.

Her case, he said, demonstrated that free speech in Britain was dead. “You should be allowed to say outrageous things,” he told the Union. “You should be allowed to say contrarian things. Free speech is a birthright that you gave us, and you guys decided not to codify it and now, poof! It is basically gone.”

Read in full: Charlie Kirk, Trump-supporting conservative activist, dies aged 31

Utah legislators and community members held a vigil for Charlie Kirk at the state capital of Salt Lake City on Wednesday evening.

Mike Kennedy, a Republican congressman, said he was “devastated” by the news of the activist’s death.

“Charlie Kirk was a light,” Kennedy told CNN. “He constantly advocated for his ideals without violence and was willing to engage with the public.

“Violence and intimidation will not make the American people stand down. The deranged cowardice of this assassin is not attributable to all the people of the United States of America.”

Charlie Kirk was no stranger to controversy and never shy of expressing his conservative views. He stated that women should prioritise motherhood over careers, and criticised birth control for making “young ladies … angry and bitter”.

In an interview last year he suggested that women in their early thirties were “not as attractive in the dating pool” as those about ten years younger. “I feel sorry for a lot of these young ladies,” he said.

He had referred to abortion as being “worse than the Holocaust” and in May told the Oxford Union: “We aim to abolish abortion the same way we abolished slavery in the 1860s […] one is arguably worse.”

He also declared in 2023 that the celebrated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was “awful” and “not a good person”.

“We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” he said of the legislation that outlawed racial and religious discrimination, arguing that it had created a “permanent” bureaucracy that promoted diversity and inclusion.

Kirk was also known for promoting false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, has said Charlie Kirk’s death was a “planned assassination” by a sniper using specialist weaponry.

Smith, who served in the Scots Guards from 1975 to 1981, told Times Radio that the gunman likely used a hunting or sniper rifle with telescopic sights.

“I’m not privy to the details of it. But I have to tell you, I know a little bit about this, having been in the army. If you’re going to fire over 200 yards and hit somebody in what is a very narrow target at that particular range, then you have to know what you’re doing,” he said.

“You have to have planned it, you have to have found the right spot to do it, and you have to have deliberately done it and found an escape route straight away, which you already planned. So that is a planned assassination in my book.”

He described the killing as a “terrible incident” and added that maybe it was “time for us to rethink some of the very vitriolic and appalling rhetoric that sometimes we use”.

Boris Johnson, the former Conservative prime minister, believes Kirk is now “a shining new martyr to free speech” and described the killing as “a tragedy, and a sign of the utter desperation and cowardice of those who could not defeat him in argument”.

He posted online: “Charlie Kirk has been killed not for espousing extremist views — because he didn’t.

“He has been killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. He has been killed because he had the courage to stand up publicly for reasonable opinions held by millions and millions of ordinary people both in the US and Britain. The world has a shining new martyr to free speech.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones.”

A British offshoot of the Turning Point USA conservative group set up by Charlie Kirk will hold a vigil in London on Friday.

Turning Point UK has said its activists will gather on Friday evening by the Montgomery statue in Whitehall and called on others to “join us in remembering Charlie”.

The group’s chief executive, Jack Ross, told Sky News on Wednesday: “It’s absolutely shocking, we’re heartbroken over here in the UK.”

The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, called Charlie Kirk’s murder “a political assassination”.

There have been more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent crimes across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to the Reuters news agency — the most sustained period of political violence in America since the 1970s.

They include the assassination of a Minnesota state representative and her husband in June; an arson attack at the Pennsylvania governor’s house in April; and two assassination attempts on Trump himself — one that left him with a grazed ear during a campaign event in July last year, and another two months later, which was foiled by federal agents.

Federal, state and local officers in Utah have conducted door-to-door searches as part of a search for the murderer of Charlie Kirk.

The suspect is believed to have shot Kirk from the rooftop of a building on the campus and then fled the scene.

The FBI said it was devoting “full resources” to the investigation and has established a website and phone line for the public to share tips.

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.