STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Federal and state authorities want help in finding the person who fired a shot that killed him.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Kirk was speaking on a college campus in Utah. Several thousand people were on hand when the bullet struck his neck. The FBI is asking anyone with photos or videos of the event at Utah Valley University to share it on their online tip forum. Kirk was an ally of President Trump and co-founder of Turning Point USA, a political youth organization. Utah's governor, Spencer Cox, called his killing a political assassination.
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SPENCER COX: To whoever did this, we will find you. We will try you. And we will hold you accountable to the furthest extent of the law. And I just want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here in the state of Utah.
INSKEEP: NPR's Kirk Siegler is covering the story in Orem, Utah. Kirk, good morning.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I just want to note, there have been a lot of conclusions jumped to and accusations on social media. But after every breaking story, we emphasize that a lot of what seems clear at the beginning turns out not to be true.
SIEGLER: Exactly.
INSKEEP: And a lot is unknown. So bring us some facts. What is known about who did this?
SIEGLER: Well, to your point, very little right now. You know, I'm across the street from the campus of Utah Valley University. It's a fortress, as you can imagine, Steve. Police cars are barricading most all of the entrances. It's hard to get in anywhere. And yesterday, police here took two different people into custody, but released them both pretty quickly. And it seems like there's been confusion among law enforcement agencies. You know, last night, FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted that a suspect was in custody. And then a short while later, he tweeted again that that person of interest was released.
This is a large campus I'm across from. There are lots of cameras and lots of eyewitness video to go through. Police say the gunman fired from the roof of a building down onto the event. We do know that. And we also know, Steve, that, you know, these graphic videos from social media show it a very chaotic scene. And now we have a manhunt in Utah, or possibly beyond.
INSKEEP: What's it like to be in the middle of that?
SIEGLER: Well, it's safe to say the entire Salt Lake City region here is waking up, I think, on edge with a suspect on the loose. You know, remember this is Utah. Someone on the run could pretty quickly get out of the city and into very remote desert country.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SIEGLER: So the manhunt has everyone on edge. You know, people are mourning. People are rattled. Isaac Davis is a student we talked to at Utah Valley University. He told us he skipped class yesterday and went to the Kirk event because he was curious, and he said, you know, there was a lot of energy on campus about it. And just a few minutes after he got there, he says it turned chaotic. Let's listen.
ISAAC DAVIS: There was a huge shot. It sounded like it came from behind me somewhere. It took a second to kind of register. But once I saw people start to kind of go into kind of a hysteric state and I saw Charlie go kind of limp, I knew that something was wrong.
SIEGLER: And, you know, Steve, these eyewitness videos that are now viral just show chaos - you know, people running away, one man screaming, carrying his small son with him. And Davis told us that he ran into the nearest building and hid in the classroom for a few minutes. And then he decided to make a run for his house, which is about a mile from campus. Davis thought it was a mass shooting, and I think a lot of people did initially, but it was just one shot.
INSKEEP: You mentioned the FBI director already. It sounds like this is both a state and federal investigation.
SIEGLER: Yeah. There's a lot of pressure on the FBI, it's safe to say. The president himself referred to the investigations in a video. The authorities do not know who fired the shot on Kirk or what the motive was, as we've been saying. But Trump in this video talked of finding, quote, "organizations."
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.
SIEGLER: So a lot of eyes on this investigation and the manhunt now underway, Steve.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Kirk Siegler in Orem, Utah. Kirk, thanks so much.
SIEGLER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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