The man arrested in the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is not cooperating with authorities, but investigators are working to establish a motive for the shooting by talking to his friends and family, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Cox said the accused gunman, Tyler Robinson, 22, will be formally charged on Tuesday. He remains in custody in Utah.<\/p>\n
Investigators have yet to piece together why Robinson allegedly scaled a rooftop at Utah Valley University during an outdoor event and shot Kirk in the neck at long range on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kirk, a staunch ally of United States President Donald Trump and co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was killed by a single rifle shot during the event attended by 3,000 people in Orem, about 65 kilometres south of Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
The killing ushered in newfound fears of a spike in political violence in the United States and an ever-deepening divide between the left and the right.<\/p>\n
Robinson has not confessed to investigators, Cox told the ABC programme \u2018This Week\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is not cooperating, but all the people around him were cooperating, and I think that\u2019s very important,\u201d the Republican governor said.<\/p>\n
One person who is apparently talking to investigators is Robinson\u2019s roommate, who was also a romantic partner, Cox said, citing the FBI. Cox described the roommate as \u201ca male transitioning to female,\u201d and said the roommate has been \u201cincredibly cooperative\u201d.<\/p>\n
Reuters has not been able to locate the roommate or representatives for the roommate to seek comment. Reuters could not determine who is serving as Robinson\u2019s legal representative.<\/p>\n
Asked on CNN\u2019s \u2018State of the Union\u2019 programme whether the roommate\u2019s gender identity is relevant to the investigation, Cox said, \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to figure out right now. It\u2019s easy to draw conclusions from that, and so we\u2019ve got the shell casings, other forensic evidence that is coming in \u2014 and trying to piece all of those things together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investigators found messages engraved into four bullet casings, which included references to memes and video game in-jokes. An affidavit filed by authorities in the case described these messages.<\/p>\n
One of the inscriptions, according to the affidavit, read: \u201cHey fascist! Catch!\u201d followed by a combination of directional arrows, an apparent reference to a sequence of button presses that unleashes a bomb in popular video game Helldivers II.<\/p>\n
Kirk\u2019s charged rhetoric, which often involved anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant comments, attracted legions of conservatives, but also engendered strong feelings from liberals and drew widespread criticism.<\/p>\n
Robinson, a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, part of Utah\u2019s public university system, was taken into custody at his parents\u2019 house, about 260 miles (420 km) southwest of the crime scene, after a 33-hour manhunt.<\/p>\n
Investigators search for motive
\nRelatives and a family friend alerted authorities that he had implicated himself in the crime, Cox said previously.<\/p>\n
While Robinson was raised by religious parents in a deeply conservative region of the state, \u201chis ideology was very different than his family,\u201d Cox said on Sunday on NBC\u2019s \u2018Meet the Press\u2019 programme, without going into specifics.<\/p>\n
State records show Robinson was a registered voter but not affiliated with any political party. A relative told investigators that Robinson had grown more political in recent years and had once discussed with another family member their dislike for Kirk and his viewpoints, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.<\/p>\n
Robinson was \u201cnot a fan\u201d of Kirk\u2019s, Cox said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk\u2019s supporters and condemnation of political violence from some across the ideological spectrum.<\/p>\n
Many Republicans, including Trump, have been quick to lash out at the political left, accusing liberals of fomenting anti-conservative vitriol that would encourage a kindred spirit to cross the line into violence \u2014 even as the president and his allies have often invoked violent imagery against their opponents.<\/p>\n
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, urged calm on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to turn the rhetoric down,\u201d Johnson said on the \u2018Fox News Sunday\u2019 programme.<\/p>\n
In conversations he has had with Republican and Democratic House members since Kirk\u2019s killing, Johnson said, \u201cThere\u2019s this recognition that people have got to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy.\u201d But Johnson also criticised Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t call the other side fascists and enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues to act and do crazy and dangerous things. And that\u2019s what we\u2019ve seen in increasing frequency,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
On \u2018Meet the Press,\u2019 Cox assigned some blame to social media, saying it has \u201cplayed a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has credited Kirk with driving young voters to conservatism. His Turning Point movement says it has more than 800 chapters across college campuses. Kirk\u2019s widow on Friday said the movement\u2019s efforts would go forward.<\/p>\n
A memorial event for Kirk will be held on September 21 in Glendale, Arizona, his organisation said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The man arrested in the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is not cooperating with authorities, but investigators are working to establish a motive for the shooting by talking to his friends and family, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said on Sunday. Cox said the accused gunman, Tyler Robinson, 22, will be formally charged on Tuesday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11939,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11940,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11938\/revisions\/11940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}