Suspected Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson allegedly confessed to the slaying in an online chat before he surrendered to police, it has emerged.
‘Hey guys, I have bad news for you all,’ Robinson allegedly wrote in a message on Discord, The Washington Post reports.
‘It was me at UVU yesterday. im sorry for all of this.’
The suspected gunman was arrested late Thursday night and is being held in a Utah jail on suspicion of aggravated murder.
He’ll appear before a court on Tuesday and will likely face capital murder charges that could see him executed by a firing squad.
Robinson allegedly sent his confession to a small group of close friends on Thursday night, before turning himself over to police.
Discord is understood to be cooperating with the FBI and local authorities on their investigation and has provided details about his online presence with investigators.
The platform previously revealed that an internal investigation ‘no evidence that the suspect planned this incident or promoted violence on Discord’.
Robinson allegedly used a sniper rifle to shoot Kirk with a single bullet to the neck while the MAGA activist was speaking Wednesday at an event on the Utah Valley University campus. He was arrested Thursday after a 33-hour manhunt.
Details about Robinson began to trickle out Friday, a picture emerging of a young man from a Republican family in St. George, a staunchly conservative city some four hours south of Orem.
Photographs showed the young man – who was in the third year of an electrician apprenticeship – posing with guns and dressed for Halloween in a costume in which he appears to be riding Trump’s shoulders.
It is alleged that Robinson carried a hatred for Kirk and ascribed to a ‘leftist ideology’ that had grown in recent years.
He lived with a transgender partner who has not been linked to the killing and who is cooperating with police.
Robinson’s family and friends said he spent large amounts of time scrolling the ‘dark corners of the internet,’ Utah Governor Spencer Cox claimed.
Cox added that the suspect had been radicalized ‘in a fairly short amount of time’.
Speculation swirled over markings that Cox said were found on unused bullet casings in the weapon Robinson is believed to have used.
One cartridge had ‘Hey, fascist! Catch!’ written on it, while another featured ‘Bella ciao,’ – a World War II-era Italian anti-fascist song that reports said had recently been repurposed in niche online circles.
Other cartridges were marked with symbols and wording that appeared to be from online gaming culture.
It took 33 hours to arrest Robinson, with police and FBI having detained, then released, two people unconnected to the case.
Investigators then found the alleged murder weapon, a high-powered hunting rifle, in a wooded area near the university and released photos of a young man dressed in a baseball cap and casual clothing.
Late Thursday, officials in Orem released more details about the suspect’s clothing and initial movements after the shooting, pleading with the public to help identify him.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the arrest was finally made at 10pm Thursday. Cox credited assistance from the alleged killer’s family.
On Monday, Patel confirmed that DNA on a towel wrapped around a rifle found near the shooting site matched that of Robinson.
Investigators also have used DNA evidence to link Robinson with a screwdriver recovered from the rooftop where the fatal shot was fired, Patel added.
The FBI director told Fox News that Robinson had written in a note before the shooting that he had an opportunity to take out Kirk and was going to do it.
Investigators were able to recover the note’s contents after it had been destroyed, Patel said, paraphrasing from the note without revealing more details.
Utah has the death penalty for such crimes – a punishment Trump has said he would like imposed.
Authorities said Robinson has not been cooperating with law enforcement.
Meanwhile, tributes to Kirk are continuing across the country.
A line of mourners wrapped around the Kennedy Center in Washington for a vigil on Sunday, and there were moments of silence at several professional sporting events.
Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to drive conservative viewpoints among young people, with his natural showmanship making him a go-to spokesman on television networks.
The father-of-two used his audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points, and to spread carefully edited clips of his interactions during debates at his many college events.
