An attendee of the event at a Utah university campus where Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday, said "there wasn't any security checkpoints."

Kirk, who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed at a Utah college event in what the governor of Utah called a political assassination carried out from a rooftop.

"There was no any type of security," said Raydon Duchene, who witnessed the shooting. "They weren't checking bags. They weren't putting you through metal detectors. There were some cops, some police officer, I don't know how many."

Duchene said she bought an entry to the Charlie Kirk event when she saw it advertised, but upon arrival no one checked her ticket.

Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by his nonprofit political organization. Immediately before the shooting, Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the person asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”

The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

Then a single shot rang out. The shooter, who Cox pledged would be held accountable in a state with the death penalty, wore dark clothing and fired from a building roof some distance away to the courtyard where the event took place.

No suspect was in custody late Wednesday, though authorities were searching for a new person of interest, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two people were detained earlier in the day but neither was determined to have had any connection to the shooting and both have been released, Utah public safety officials said.

Authorities did not immediately identify a motive but the circumstances of the shooting drew renewed attention to an escalating threat of political violence in the United States that in the last several years has cut across the ideological spectrum.

The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation, but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive.