CHARLIE KIRK'S SHOCKING DEATH: ASSASSINATED IN AMERICA

THE FATAL SHOOTING OF THE CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST AT A UTAH UNIVERSITY SPARKS FEARS OF ESCALATING POLITICAL VIOLENCE

- By JOHNNY DODD

A SINGLE SHOT Left: Kirk tossed Turning Point USA baseball caps to the crowd minutes before he was fatally shot at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Sept. 10. Right: Police sealed off the scene after Kirk was rushed to the hospital.

It happened in the blink of an eye. The crack and pop of a gunshot rang out over a crowded courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, and the next thing Raydon DeChene—who had come there to hear conservative political personality Charlie Kirk speak—remembers is a scene of chaos as the terrified crowd scrambled for cover. “He was in the middle of a sentence,” recalls DeChene, 51, describing the moment the single bullet struck Kirk. “All of a sudden I heard a pop, and I saw his head fall back and blood pouring out of his neck.”

Kirk was rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead two hours after the shooting on Sept. 10. The assassination of the 31-year-old commentator, husband and father of two shocked and angered a nation that has witnessed a surge in political violence in recent years. President Donald Trump called the shooting “a dark moment for America” and described Kirk—whose influential Turning Point USA is active on more than 3,500 high school and college campuses—as a “patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate and the country he loved so much.”

A provocative speaker who gleefully challenged liberal viewpoints during his Prove Me Wrong campus events, Kirk appealed to mainly young conservatives with his sometimes controversial pronouncements. critique of DEI initiatives that, when traveling, “if I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”