The Utah trade school student jailed on suspicion of fatally shooting right-wing activist Charlie Kirk will face formal charges next week, according to Utah’s governor. 

Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday night, local time, after relatives and a family friend alerted authorities that he had implicated himself in the crime, Governor Spencer Cox said on Friday, telling a press conference, “we got him”. 

The arrest capped a 33-hour manhunt for the lone suspect in Wednesday’s killing. 

The killing has widely been seen as a foreboding inflection point in US politics, with the country facing its most sustained period of political violence in decades.

Mr Kirk, co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA and a staunch Trump ally, was gunned down by a single rifle shot fired from a rooftop during an outdoor event attended by 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem, about 65 kilometres from Salt Lake City.

A bolt-action rifle believed to be the murder weapon was found nearby, and police released images from surveillance cameras showing a “person of interest” wearing dark clothing and sunglasses.

A break in the case came when a relative and a family friend alerted the local sheriff’s office that he had “confessed to them or implied that he had committed” the murder, Mr Cox said.

Officials said Mr Robinson’s father first recognised his son as the person of interest in images released by police, and later encouraged him to surrender.

Mr Robinson, a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College, part of Utah’s public university system, was taken into custody at his parents’ house, about 420km from the crime scene.

Police collected additional evidence on Friday evening from his apartment in St George, about 8km from his parents’ home near the Arizona border.

Yellow crime scene tape was taken down after FBI and state forensic investigators finished their work, but officers remained outside the apartment on Saturday. 

Neighbours put up a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign at the entrance to the complex, which has been swarmed by reporters.

Mr Robinson was held on suspicion of aggravated murder and other charges that were expected to be formally filed in court early next week, the Utah governor said.

‘Watershed in American history’

The killing has stirred outrage among Charlie Kirk’s supporters and condemnation of political violence from across the ideological spectrum. 

Allies of Mr Kirk have taken to the internet in organised efforts to try to have anyone minimising or mocking his death fired from their jobs.

Reuters has so far tallied 15 dismissals or suspensions tied to comments about the killing.

Mr Cox called Mr Kirk’s murder a “watershed in American history” and compared it to the rash of US political assassinations of the 1960s. 

He declined to discuss possible motives for the killing. 

Investigators found messages engraved into four bullet casings, which included references to memes and video game in-jokes. One casing, according to the arrest affidavit, had been inscribed: “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao”.

Many Republicans, including Mr 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 — even as the president and his allies routinely invoke violent imagery against their opponents.

State records show Mr Robinson was a registered voter but not affiliated with any political party. 

A relative told investigators he had grown more political in recent years and had once discussed with another family member their dislike for Mr Kirk and his viewpoints, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

Drivers of political violence a mixed bag, expert says

An expert on democracy and security said it was hard to read too much into the messages left on the shell casings recovered by authorities. 

One of the inscriptions read: “hey fascist! CATCH!” followed by a combination of directional arrows, an apparent reference to a sequence of button presses that unleashes a bomb in a popular video game.

Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters the symbology found on the bullet casings suggested the shooter had an affiliation with the so-called Groyper movement, associated with far-right activist and commentator Nick Fuentes.

“It’s an eclectic ideological movement marked by video game memes, anti-gay, Nick Fuentes white supremacy, irony,” she said. 

“It certainly leans right, but it is quite eclectic.”

Mr Fuentes, who had called Mr Kirk his foe and adversary, has denied any link between his movement and the killing, which he condemned.

“My followers and I are currently being framed for the murder of Charlie Kirk by the mainstream media based on literally zero evidence,” he said in a post to X.

Ms Kleinfeld said that, in some respects, “the ideological beliefs of the shooter don’t matter”.

“What matters is how they’re taken by society. And if our society chooses to keep pointing fingers, whether the person turns out to be right, left or just unstable, then the violence will grow from the pointing of fingers, regardless of the act itself,” she said.

Ms Kleinfeld said most perpetrators of political violence were not clearly on one ideological side or another, but typically driven by “a hodgepodge of conspiracy beliefs and mental illness”.

Reuters