A memorial is held for Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in Utah, at the Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. September 10, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin O'Hara

By Andrew Hay and Brad Brooks

OREM, Utah (Reuters) - U.S. investigators said on Thursday they had found the bolt-action rifle they believed was used to kill the influential conservative activist Charlie Kirk as he gave a talk at a university in Utah, but were still searching for the shooter.

Kirk, a 31-year-old podcast-radio commentator and a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is credited with helping build the Republican Party's support among younger voters. He was killed on Wednesday by a single gunshot in what Trump called a "heinous assassination."

The killing, captured in graphic detail in videos that rapidly spread around the internet, occurred as Kirk spoke onstage at an outdoor event called "Prove Me Wrong" in front of about 3,000 people at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, about 40 miles (65 km) south of Salt Lake City.

The killer arrived on campus a few minutes before the event began, and could be seen on security-camera video ascending stairwells to get onto a nearby roof before firing at Kirk, according to the FBI and state officials. Kirk, a staunch defender of gun rights, was answering an audience question about mass shootings when the bullet struck his neck; screaming audience members fled in panic.

The shooter jumped off the roof and fled into an adjoining neighborhood, Robert Bohls, the FBI special agent in charge, told reporters. Investigators found a "high-powered, bolt-action" rifle in a nearby wooded area, and were examining that along with palm prints and footprints for clues.

The shooter appears to be of college age and "blended in well" on the campus, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason told reporters. The shooter has not been publicly identified, and while investigators said they had "good video footage," they would not make that public for now.

Kirk, co-founder and president of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was pronounced dead at a local hospital hours later. His killing stirred immediate expressions of outrage and denunciations of political violence from Democrats, Republicans and foreign governments.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox said Kirk's events on college campuses were part of a tradition of open political debate that was "foundational to the formation of our country, to our most basic constitutional rights."

"When someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened," Cox said.

Trump said on Thursday he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Vice President JD Vance canceled his trip to New York to commemorate the attacks by al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and instead will travel to Utah to visit Kirk's family, a person familiar with the situation said.

Kirk began his career in conservative and right-wing politics as a teenager. A little more than a decade later, some of the friends he made along the way are now at the highest levels of U.S. government and media, with Vance recalling that he was in multiple group chats with Kirk.

"So much of the success we've had in this administration traces directly to Charlie's ability to organize and convene," Vance wrote in a lengthy tribute posted on social media. "He didn't just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government."

ERA OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

The shooting punctuated the most sustained period of U.S. political violence since the 1970s. Reuters has documented more than 300 cases of politically motivated violent acts across the ideological spectrum since supporters of Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump himself has survived two attempts on his life, one that left him with a grazed ear during a campaign event in July 2024 and another two months later foiled by federal agents.

Two people were detained, questioned and released on Wednesday evening, but neither were suspects, the FBI said on Thursday.

One of the two detainees, an older man seen in photos that circulated online shortly after the killing, was familiar to locals as a political "gadfly," according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Officials said he had been charged with obstruction by university police and released.

Kirk, who was married and the father of two young children, published his most recent book last year calling for a "Right Wing Revolution" and had just returned to the U.S. from an overseas speaking tour in South Korea and Japan.

His appearance on Wednesday was part of a planned 15-event "American Comeback Tour" of U.S. college campuses. Known for his often-provocative discourse on race, gender, immigration and gun regulation, Kirk often used such events to invite members of the crowd to debate him live, and was frequently challenged by both people on the left and the far right.

"He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions," Vance wrote in his tribute. "If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he'd encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak."

In a video message taped in the Oval Office, Trump vowed that his administration would track down those responsible for Kirk's killing, along with "each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it."

Trump, who routinely describes political rivals, judges and others who stand in his way as "radical left lunatics" and warns that they pose an existential threat to the nation, also decried violent political rhetoric, while casting it as a phenomenon of the political left.

"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals," Trump said in the video. "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Orem, and Brad Brooks in Logan, Colorado; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Jana Winter, Helen Coster, Jasper Ward, James Oliphant, Bo Erickson, Andrea Shalal, Kanishka Singh, Ismail Shakil; Julia Harte and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Nick Zieminski)