In a college campus, a fiery speaker – and then a single shot

Just a few weeks to the autumn semester around the white canopy on the grassy university courtyard gathered a crowd. They eagerly heard what a speaker had to say under him. It was a typical university scene with the promise of the exchange of ideas and debate, with the exception of one way: its size.

This speaker was Charlie Kirk, one of the most influencing voices in the “Make America Great Again” movement Donald Trump and attracted more than 3,000 people on Wednesday. Students with a backpack that appeared from the surrounding buildings like Kirk, wearing a white T -shirt that called “freedom”, threw his fans of Red Maga Caps, Frisbee.

He took his place under the canopy, the slogans “American Return” and “I did badly”, it decorated. He picked up a hand microphone and began to reach the audience.

Aswered a question about the arms violence, the cracked single shot.

Kirk’s frequent stops Kirk, 31., Podcaster, founded a conservative youth organization Turning Point USA Kirk. He accepted the ideas of Christian nationalism and often made a provocative statement of gender, race, religion and politics. He insisted that it won that he had “some weapons deaths every year so that we could have a second addition to the protection of our other rights given by God”.

They often brought these ideas to university campuses, where they were particularly controversial. Kirk was known to discuss the progressive and challenging audience openly to show him on political points. His appaurance of academic soils often drew protests and did not differ Wednesday. Online petitions signed by thousands of people had CAMS for their interview at Utah Valley University and more, scheduled for seven. 30 at Utah State University to be canceled. “As students at Utah Valley University, we came to cheer up an environment that seeks inclusive and diversity,” one said. “Yet this ideal is threatened by the planned speech committee Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s presence and reports he provides are, unlike the values ​​of understanding, acceptance and progress that many of us hold.”

Answers to the university associated with “the commitment of freedom of expression, intellectual investigation and constructive dialogue”.

No metal detectors or bag checks, as they were typical of Kirk’s events, was light safety. Six university police offices were assigned to the event, the more such a private security. There were no metal detectors or bag checks, students said Associated Press. Some expect that no one even checked their tickets.

When Kirk arrives, Cheers rose. The crowd packed the terrace courtyard and the students included several protesters, watched from nearby buildings or overlooks.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been a bulk shooter over the past 10 years?” A member of the audience asked.

Kirk replied, “Too much.”

The interviewer followed: “Do you know how many bulk shooters have been in America in the last 10 years?”

“Counting or counting the gang violence?” Kirk asked.

That was his last words before the shot hit him. The shot came from the figure in the dark clothing we moved away from the academic ground, the authorities said.

Blood has rushed from Kirk’s neck. Sometimes he held the microphone and then failed.

Madison Lattin, 21, was several tens of feet from Kirka’s left when the shot came. Lattin, who had long looked up at Kirka, watched his body twitching and seeing blood.

And she clicks on her head, “It was a shot. What now?”

Shock, followed by chaos and escape “No! Charlie!” Screaming a member of the audience.

“Go! He shouted another.

The crowd fled from the square in several directions, some of them slipped and fell or jumped over the benches that ASY did.

Cari Bartholomew, Utah Moms for America, said she had knocked out her seventeen -year -old son from school, so she could expect Kirk’s event. Other women from the group and their children joined them. Bartholomew’s son waited for Kirk to be shot. A chaos followed, and she couldn’t find him when people were hiding to cover and started running. Later she learned that she was unharmed.

“We all tried to catch small children and get them as close as possible to us,” she said.

Ryan Devries, 25 years old in the field of real estate administration and volunteers, said he was surprised by the lack of security presence at the event; He left his firearm in his car when he expected to go through metal detectors.

He was wearing a firmly wrapped crowd to ask Kirka as he heard what sounded like fireworks. He looked at the stage after the shot was fired, Devries saw Kirka’s head dropped.

Soon a bumper broke out with target and panic, Devries said. Some expect to have threw themselves into a nearby building and walked through the water fountain to escape, he said. Others duck and hid.

“People were definitely worried about their lives. I saw in their eyes. I heard it in their voices. People cried. People shouted,” Devries said.

After panic retreated, Erynn Lammi, a 35 -year -old student who heard a shot, saw through the courtyard driven Airpods, phones, keys and garbage. When she returned home, she said, shouting her eyes, and felt Kirka’s wife and children when she reminded her of the loss of her own father when she was 13.

“Helplessness,” Lammi said.

In hours, his death reflected all over the country, and the shooting convicted of the entire political spectrum as an exploration of the escalating threat of political violence in the United States, including the assassination of the democratic state lawmaker Minnesota and her husband in June and the fateful shooting of Israeli Embassy in Washington. President Donald Trump was shot last year in his ear on a campaign in Western Pennsylvania.

“Today the young man was murdered with cold blood and expressed his political views,” said train president George W. Bush. “It happens on the university campus, where the sacred open exchange of contradictory ideas should be.

President of democratic training Joe Biden has published his condolence to X. “There is no place for this kind of violence in our country. It must end,” he wrote. “Jill and I pray for the family and close to Charlie Kirk.”

Late Wednesday evening remained shooter at freedom. Police helicopters still occasionally treated over the orm and the roadblocks caused overload in the streets surrounding the campus. Armed officers walked in small groups.

Just outside the campus, the man stood, we have a holding company on the street that read “RIP Charlie”. In his honor, a show of trucks rode through urban American flags.

Several dozens of people gathered on the nearby vigil and held electric candles in Lightono light. When he looked at the quiet, chaotic afternoon behind them, the speakers read the biblical verses.