Verified videos taken at the scene of the shooting of high-profile right-wing activist Charlie Kirk show what appears to be a figure on the roof of a nearby building.
Graphic videos show the 31-year-old was hit in the neck with a bullet, causing catastrophic injury, as he spoke at an event in Utah Valley University on Wednesday, US time.
“This is a political assassination,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox said.
Videos taken around the time of the incident paint a picture of what happened.
Where the shooting happened
A spokeswoman for the university told The New York Times that the shooter fired from the Losee Center — a central building that houses the university’s welcome centre.
Part of that building is just over 100 metres from the location where Charlie Kirk was speaking when he was shot.
The roof of the building is high above the crowd of an estimated 3,000 people who had gathered to watch Mr Kirk speak.
Many in the crowd duck, scream, and start to panic in the moments after the single shot is fired.
A live stream of the video, with high-quality audio, captures the so-called “crack — thump” of the shot.
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The live streamer is talking to members of the audience on a landing above and to the left of Mr Kirk.
The crack of the bullet, which is the sound of it travelling at supersonic speed, is heard just before the thump — the sound of the gun’s muzzle blast.
This is consistent with the shot being taken from a short distance away, rather than up close.
That is because the cracking sound occurs when the bullet passes near the camera, while the thumping sound comes from the muzzle of the gun, and takes longer to reach the camera because it is farther away.
The same audio sequence can be heard in other videos taken near Mr Kirk.
Video shows figure on roof
A video posted online and verified by ABC News Verify shows, in the moments after the shooting, what appears to be a figure quickly moving from a location on the roof.
ABC News Verify has highlighted the figure and zoomed in to show it more clearly.
A 3D rendering of the campus, taken from Google Earth, shows that the location of the building has a clear line of sight to the location of Charlie Kirk.
The video can be geo-located to the campus, showing it was taken from inside a building known as the “Hall of Flags”. The interior and its flags are clearly visible in the full video.
Figure seen in another video
Another video posted online, claiming to be taken before the shooting, shows what could also be the figure from another angle.
It was taken on a path that leads down to the Losee Center.
“So there’s somebody on the roof right there,” the man recording the video said.
“Just ran from … over … from over there, ran in,” he said, while pointing across the roof.
It is not obvious whether the figure in this video is a person, but the location is consistent with the location of the figure moving away in the other video.
This video can be geo-located close to the shooting location by distinct objects in the scene’s foreground, and the unique shape of the Losee Center.
