Charlie Kirk shooting latest: Trump blames ‘radical left’, but does not mention attacks on Democrats as search for suspect continues | Charlie Kirk shooting

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said on X that he is “appalled” by the murder of Charlie Kirk and added that there is “no justification for political violence”.

Carney wrote:

I am appalled by the murder of Charlie Kirk. There is no justification for political violence and every act of it threatens democracy.

My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and loved ones.

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani paid his respects to Charlie Kirk and condemned gun violence in the United States.

In a video shared on X of Mamdani speaking at the annual Jews for Economic and Racial Justice (JFREJ) fundraiser, he took a moment to first address the news of the shooting and to speak more widely about the “plague” of gun violence in the country.

He said:

Before I begin, I do want to take a moment to address the horiffic political assassination that just occurred today in Utah. Charlie Kirk is dead – yet another victim of gun violence in a nation where what should be a rarity has turned in to a plague.

It cannot be a question of political agreement or alignment that allows us to mourn. It must be the shared notion of humanity that binds us all.

… It reminds us that this news is not just that of the murder of a prominent political figure, but also the news of a wife who grieves her husband [and] of a one-year-old and a three-year-old who will grow up without a father. And the fact that there are families who are feeling that same anguish right now in Colorado as they wait for their children, also shot at a school, to emerge from surgery is the same anguish that too many across our city and our nation reckon with in silence every day as we contend with an epidemic of suffering.

We can and must do more to challenge the status quo that has allowed this pain to become routine, that has allowed the question of ‘which mass shooting?’ to respond to the news of one that is shared. And it is incumbent on all of us to repair the tears in our shared civic fabric and to make our nation one that is worthy of its greatest ideals. With that, I wish that Charlie rest in peace as well as every other victim of gun violence from this day and before in our country.

Reporting by Cy Neff in Orem, Utah.

On Wednesday night, the campus of Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem remained on lockdown, with traffic cones and flashing police cars blocking every entrance.

At the nearby Timpanogos regional hospital, where Charlie Kirk was taken after the shooting and pronounced dead, roughly a dozen people were holding a vigil – one of several taking place that evening across the region – at the hospital’s entrance.

The mourners draped the hospital sign in American flags and surrounded its base with a thicket of candles and homemade signs, including “Peacemakers wanted” and “we love you Charlie Kirk”. When the hospital’s lawn sprinklers abruptly turned on, gatherers smothered them with grocery bags and cut-off plastic bottles to keep the memorial dry.

CJ Sowers, 33, and Ammon Paxton, 19, were in the crowd for Kirk’s speech, and said they watched the shooting unfold.

Paxton said he was right in front of Kirk, and watched his body go limp. “Charlie Kirk was a major role model and hero for me,” said Paxton, who spoke with a red Make America Great Again cap folded in his hand. “One of our greatest heroes is dead.”

Greg Cronin, a faculty member at UVU, said that he has stood on the street corner, with a flag in hand, for the past seven hours. He said he was working in the building next to where Kirk was speaking and watched students flood through its halls after the shooting. Cronin said he hoped the shooting could bring people together in dialogue instead of further political division.

“We won’t minimize actions like this around the world, ever,” Cronin said. “But we can minimize the impact that they are allowed to have.”

Here is a graphic showing the site of the Charlie Kirk shooting at Utah Valley University campus and also the reported location of the shooter:

What we know so far

The killing of Charlie Kirk has particular resonance for US public figures who have experienced political violence themselves. Here’s reaction from some of them, care of the Associated Press.

Nancy Pelosi

The former House speaker’s husband was seriously injured at their California home in 2022 by a man wielding a hammer. Pelosi, a Democrat, posted that “the horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation.”

Gabrielle Giffords

The Democratic former US representative suffered a serious brain injury from a 2011 shooting while meeting with constituents at a shopping centre in Arizona. She posted on social media that she was “horrified” to hear of Kirk’s shooting, saying: “Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence.”

Steve Scalise

The House majority leader, a Republican, was shot at practice for a charity baseball in Virginia in 2017. He asked people on X to “please join me in praying for Charlie Kirk after this senseless act”.

Josh Shapiro

The Democratic Pennsylvania governor was evacuated with his family from the governor’s mansion earlier this year after a man broke in and set a fire that caused significant damage. “We must speak with moral clarity,” Shapiro wrote on X. “The attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.”

Gretchen Whitmer

The Michigan governor, a Democrat, was the subject of a failed kidnapping plot by rightwing extremists who hoped to ignite a civil war. She posted: “We should all come together to stand up against any and all forms of political violence.”

Robert F Kennedy Jr

The health and human services secretary appeared to invoke his family’s losses as he reacted to Kirk’s killing. Kennedy’s father, for whom he was named, was assassinated in 1968. RFK Jr wrote on social media that “once again, a bullet has silenced the most eloquent truth teller of an era”, calling Kirk a “relentless and courageous crusader for free speech”.

The Utah university where Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking to students is the state’s largest public university after years of rapid enrolment growth.

Utah Valley University, located about 40 miles (64km) south of Salt Lake City, has grown fivefold over the past three decades. It now has nearly 47,000 students, according to the university website.

The university was founded under a different name in 1941 as a vocational school focused on providing war production training, the Associated Press reports. Nearly nine out of 10 students at the school in Orem are from Utah, and 18% of them are aged 25 or older.

Utah is one of 14 US states that allow some level of concealed carry of firearms on public college and university campuses.

In the days before Charlie Kirk’s killing, he debuted his conservative message in Asia.

The rightwing activist cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned in Tokyo about a “globalist menace” on his first speaking tour of Asia, Reuters reports.

In Seoul on Friday he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference that has previously featured speakers including Donald Trump Jr.

“The phenomenon of young people, especially men, turning conservative is occurring simultaneously across multiple continents,” Kirk told the audience, who chanted “USA” as he entered the stage to a pyrotechnic display.

It is not unique to the US, which is why it deserves more attention. That is why I chose South Korea as my first Asian destination.

After Seoul, Kirk went Tokyo and spoke at a symposium hosted by the Sanseito party, which made its political breakthrough in a July upper house vote warning about a “silent invasion” of immigrants.

“I’m excited … to learn and to hopefully invigorate the people of your great nation to keep fighting this globalist menace,” Kirk said in an interview with a Sanseito legislator posted on YouTube before the event.

The party’s leader, Sohei Kamiya, said on X he was “stunned and heartbroken” at the news of Kirk’s death, calling him a “comrade committed to building the future with us”.

Vance says Kirk helped with win poll as well as staffing ‘the entire government’

Some experts worry that Charlie Kirk’s killing will inflame an already-divided US and inspire more unrest amid a surge in political violence.

In the first six months of this year the US had about 150 politically-motivated attacks, said Mike Jensen, University of Maryland researcher – nearly twice as many as in the same period last year, based on the university’s database tracking such violence since 1970.

Reuters also reports that domestic terrorism experts cite the increasingly inflammatory tone of US political discourse as well as economic insecurity among a convergence of factors for the increased violence.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has scaled back efforts to counter domestic extremism, redirecting resources toward immigration enforcement and citing the southern border as the top security threat.

Jensen said:

This is an administration that, whether you agree with it or not, has made profound changes to this country in the eight months it’s been in office

Some people love it, some people hate it. The people that hate it are starting to act out. People who love it are going to act out against those people that hate it, and it becomes a vicious spiral that could lead us into something really, really bad.

No suspect in custody over Kirk killing, authorities confirm

Here’s footage we’ve just published of the moments leading up to Charlie Kirk’s shooting at the university campus event in Utah.

As reported, he had just been asked a question about mass shooters before an apparent shot rang out and people soon began running for cover.

The footage also has people later describing the chaotic scenes, including a man who says “everyone was just jumping on top of each other, no one was trying to get shot, everyone was just covering each other up, because no one knew if there were going to be more shots fired”.

Warning: some viewers may find this footage distressing.

Australian political leaders have expressed disbelief at what US officials are calling a “political assassination”.

Acting prime minister Richard Marles said his thoughts went out to Charlie Kirk’s family.

“There is absolutely no place for political violence,” he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation television.

That’s the message that we have to take from this … that is not a way in which to resolve arguments and disputes and discussions in society.

Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, said on X that Kirk’s death was “deeply distressing”.

There is no space for political violence in any democracy. My thoughts, and those of all Australians, are with his family and loved ones.

Australian Associated Press quoted the conservative senator James Paterson as echoing Marles’ comments and telling Sky News: “It does seem that there has been an uptick in this sort of violence recently, and that is not a good thing.”

In Australia, the head of Turning Point’s Australian organisation said he was devastated by Charlie Kirk’s death and compared him to a martyred prophet.

“Often, prophets are made most powerful when they’ve been martyred, and I think that’s what’s going to happen with Charlie Kirk,” Joel Jammal told the Australian Associated Press news agency.

I think [the killing] is going to solidify his vision, his movement.

His vision set down the pathway to show how we can breathe our values into politics.

Kirk, 31, co-founded the rightwing youth activist group Turning Point USA in 2012 to promote conservative, anti-woke views among young people.

A moment of silence on the floor of the US House of Representatives over Charlie Kirk’s killing has turned into a shouting match between Republicans and Democrats.

The commotion began when Republican representative Lauren Boebert rose after the moment of prayer to ask that the House also say a prayer for Kirk, according to multiple lawmakers who were on the floor during the incident, Axios reports.

Democrats then shouted “what about the kids in Colorado”, referring to a school shooting in Colorado that also occurred on Wednesday afternoon. Boebert responded that she was about to reference that tragedy before she was interrupted, the report continues.

Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, who worked as Kirk’s director of Hispanic engagement at Turning Point USA, then stood up and yelled at Democrats: “You caused this!”

That prompted a raucous Democratic response, with Democratic representative Jahana Hayes, a leader on the gun violence prevention task force, shouting: “Pass some gun laws!”

Footage of the commotion from C-Span can be seen here on Instagram.

Utah Valley University resisted pressure to bar Charlie Kirk from speaking

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Trump blames ‘radical left political violence’ for killing of Charlie Kirk, fails to mention killing of Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota