Witnesses Recount Scene of Charlie Kirk Assassination

Kirk, a conservative political activist, was speaking to a large crowd at Utah Valley University when he was shot.

Allison Hemingway-Witty cries after Charlie Kirk is assassinated during Turning Point's visit to Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Sept. 10, 2025. Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP

Conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, while speaking in front of a large crowd as part of a campus speaking tour.

Kirk was only a few minutes into his event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah, when he was struck by gunfire.

The stop at Utah Valley University was to be the opening event in his “American Comeback Tour.”

President Donald Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday afternoon, announced Kirk had died.

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote.

“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.

“He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”

Jeremy King and his wife Amy were seated close to Kirk’s pop-up stand and recalled that he had begun to answer his second question from the audience, on the topic of gun rights and gun ownership in the LGBT community.

That’s when Jeremy heard what he thought could have been a firecracker. He initially asked himself, “Is this real?”

“And then, immediately, you know, people are getting into cover, and you know it’s real,” he told The Epoch Times.

Amy, by contrast, said she knew immediately what had happened.

“I just screamed, ‘They just shot him,’” she said.

Jeremy and Amy fled the scene of the shooting, going out the same way as a security team carried Kirk to a black SUV waiting behind his pop-up stand. Jeremy captured a recording of the scene.

“I did keep the video just knowing that this moment needed to be recorded,” he said.

Utah Valley University junior Aspen Brown told KSL that she was standing to the right of Kirk, about 15 feet away from his stand, when she heard a gunshot. Then pandemonium swept over the crowd.

“He was two questions in and then we heard the shot,” she said afterward, still shaken. “People were trying to run out when they heard that.”

Michael Andersen, a professor at UVU, told KSL he was about 50 feet from where Kirk was sitting when he heard what he initially believed was a firework going off.

“Then people started running out of the amphitheater, and I saw some people trying to get up out of the terraces,” Andersen told KSL.

The UVU professor said that, only as he was walking away, someone said they saw the moment Kirk was hit.

Another student at UVU, identified only as Ethan, told Fox 13 that he heard a shot and saw “a wave of blood come out of his chest.” After that, Ethan said he dived to the ground.

“I had a couple of people trample me, actually, so it was pretty horrific,” Ethan said.

Former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican who attended Kirk’s event, told Fox News he heard one shot and then saw Kirk fall back.

“As soon as I saw Charlie go back, you realize that it was a shot,” Chaffetz said. “It wasn’t as if there was a whole bunch of gunfire. It was one shot.”

An elderly man was initially taken into custody at the scene. Footage of his detention was shared widely on social media with the implication that he was the suspected shooter. However, he was later released by police.

Later on Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that another subject had been taken into custody in connection with the shooting. Patel subsequently announced that this second subject was also released following a law enforcement interrogation, and that the FBI is continuing to investigate the shooting.

T.J. Muscaro, Arjun Singh, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.