A suspect in the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah university has been taken into custody, US President Donald Trump said yesterday, ending an intense manhunt that followed what Trump described as a “heinous assassination.”
Kirk’s killer had eluded police and federal agents for more than 24 hours after Wednesday’s shooting, in which a sniper fired a single gunshot that killed Kirk, 31, during an appearance at Utah Valley University in Orem.
“I think we have him,” Trump told Fox News in an interview, adding that a person who knows the suspect had turned him in. “I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody.”
Photo: EPA
Trump did not share the suspect’s identity.
After Trump’s interview, the New York Post reported that the suspect is a 22-year-old man from Utah.
More than 7,000 leads and tips have poured in, officials said.
“We cannot do our job without the public’s help,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox said during a Thursday news conference with FBI Director Kash Patel.
The direct appeals for public support, including new and enhanced photos of a person wearing a black top, black sunglasses and a dark baseball cap, appeared to signal law enforcement’s continued struggles. The long-sleeved top appears to have been emblazoned with an image of a bald eagle flying across a US flag.
Two people who were taken into custody shortly after the shooting were determined not to be connected.
Other clues included a Mauser .30 caliber, bolt-action rifle found in a towel in the woods. A spent cartridge was recovered from the chamber, and three other rounds were loaded in the magazine, according to information circulated among law enforcement and described to The Associated Press. The weapon and ammunition were being analyzed by law enforcement at a federal lab.
Officials are offering a US$100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Cox, a Republican, said he is prepared to seek the death penalty.
The FBI had circulated grainy images apparently taken from security cameras showing a person
Kirk, an author, podcast host and close ally of Trump, helped build the Republican Party’s support among younger voters.
Trump said the suspect was recognized by people close to him, and suggested the suspect’s father drove him to a police station and handed him over.
Reflecting the highly political nature of the killing, Kirk’s coffin yesterday was transported to his home city of Phoenix, Arizona, on Vice President J.D. Vance’s official plane.
Footage showed Vance with his hands on the casket as it was carried to Air Force 2.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS