Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday September 10th during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31 years of age.

Kirk died doing what made him a potent political force — rallying the right on a college campus, this time Utah Valley University. The event was kicking off a planned series of Kirk college appearances from Colorado to Virginia dubbed “The American Comeback Tour.”

His assassination was one of an escalating number of attacks on political figures, from the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker to last summer’s shooting of Trump, that have roiled the nation.

Trump ordered flags lowered to half-staff and issued a presidential proclamation. The president, who sustained a minor ear injury when he was shot at a campaign event last year, said he and Kirk had a close relationship.

He described Kirk on Truth Social as a “great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”

The surveillance video showed a person wearing a hat, sunglasses and a long sleeve black shirt running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the roof and dropping to the ground. The person is believed to have fled into a neighborhood after firing one shot and had not yet been identified, officials said Thursday.

“We cannot do our job without the public’s help,” said Cox, adding that the FBI had received more than 7,000 leads and tips so far.

Tyler Robinson, 22, had indicated to a family friend afterwards that he was responsible, said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. He also cited as key pieces of evidence engravings on bullets found in a rifle believed used in the attack as well as chatting app messages attributed to the accused shooter that a roommate shared with law enforcement after the shooting.

Cox said they want to “catch this assassin and hold him accountable.”

The governor said Utah would be prepared to seek the death penalty once an arrest was made.

Kirk’s evangelical Christian beliefs were intertwined with his political prospective, and he argued that there was no true separation of church and state.

He also referenced the Seven Mountain Mandate that specifies seven areas where Christians are to lead — politics, religion, media, business, family, education, the arts, and entertainment.

In the foreword to a book written by a pastor and Turning Point staffer to be published next week, Kirk wrote: “In today’s America, the Christian faithful are faced with a terrifying and broad array of dangers and threats. We are menaced not by new false gods, but by the return of demons from long ago.”

Kirk argued for a new conservatism that advocated for freedom of speech, challenging Big Tech and the media, and centering working-class Americans beyond the nation’s capital.

“We have to ask ourselves a question as a conservative movement: Are we going to revert back to the party of the status quo ruling class?” he said in his speech opening the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2020.

“Or are we going to learn from what I call the MAGA doctrine? The MAGA doctrine, which is a doctrine of American renewal, revival, one that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.”

Kirk showed off an apocalyptic style in his popular podcast, radio show and on the campaign trail. During an appearance with Trump in Georgia last fall, he said Democrats “stand for everything God hates.” Kirk called the Trump vs. Kamala Harris choice “a spiritual battle.”

“This is a Christian state. I’d like to see it stay that way,” Kirk told the 10,000 or so Georgians, who at one point joined Kirk in a deafening chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”

“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” Kirk said during a Turning Point event in Salt Lake City in 2023, adding that gun deaths can be reduced but will never go away.