https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/0...rest-in-the-kirk-investigation?smid=url-share
The authorities on Thursday released two images of a person they are seeking as they investigate the fatal shooting of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, indicating that they had not been able to identify him through facial recognition or other technology and needed the public’s help.
The grainy images show a man in a stairwell wearing a black shirt, a baseball cap and dark sunglasses. The authorities have described him as a person of interest. State and federal officials also said they had found a bolt-action rifle used in the attack, as well as imprints of a forearm, a palm and a shoe.
Investigators were able to track the gunman’s movements as he climbed onto the roof of a campus building, said Beau Mason, Utah’s public safety chief, at a news conference. Mr. Mason added that officials would release the images of the person they were tracking only if they could not identify him through other means.
The weapon used to kill Mr. Kirk, a close ally of President Trump, was a “high-powered bolt-action rifle” that investigators later found in a wooded area near the campus of Utah Valley University, where Mr. Kirk had been speaking to a large crowd on Wednesday afternoon, said Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City office.
Officials referred to the person they were hunting as a man throughout a news conference on Thursday morning. Mr. Mason said the person being sought “blended in well” at the campus because he appeared “to be of college age.”
He arrived on campus shortly before noon and used a stairway to make his way to the roof of a campus building overlooking the site of Mr. Kirk’s scheduled appearance, according to Mr. Mason. After the shooting — a single shot that hit Mr. Kirk in the neck — the person jumped from the roof and fled to a nearby neighborhood.
Here’s what else to know:
- The weapon: The gun discovered near campus was an older-model Mauser 30-06 caliber high-powered bolt-action rifle, according to three federal law enforcement officials based on a preliminary internal assessment. The weapon and several recovered cartridges are being traced by A.T.F. analysts, but the evidence has not yet led to a person of interest, they said.
- Heightened fears: Mr. Kirk’s killing, the latest in a string of attacks targeting American political figures, intensified fears that political violence is becoming normalized in a highly polarized nation. On the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, a request for a moment of silence for Mr. Kirk devolved into bitter partisanship. Read more ›
- Trump casts blame: President Trump blamed the rhetoric of the “radical left” for Mr. Kirk’s killing, but investigators in Utah did not assign any possible motive to the gunman. Mr. Kirk promoted beliefs including that the benefits of gun rights outweighed the lives lost to gun violence, and that nonwhite immigrants would soon displace white Americans. Read more ›
- Commentator fired: MSNBC has fired Matthew Dowd, a political analyst who said on-air that Mr. Kirk had pushed hate speech, adding that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” Mr. Dowd later apologized on social media. Read more ›
- Pressure on Patel: Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, congratulated officials for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting” on Wednesday. He was forced to backtrack on social media after the person was cleared and released. The reversal was a source of significant embarrassment for the F.B.I. director on a day when three former agents filed a lawsuit portraying him as a partisan neophyte.
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