Prosecutors unveiled new videos on Tuesday that they said traced the movements of Tyler Robinson across the campus of Utah Valley University in the hours surrounding the conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination there last year.
The videos were shown at a hearing in Provo, Utah, where a judge is determining whether Mr. Robinson, 23, who is accused of killing Mr. Kirk, must stand trial.
Prosecutors and a lead investigator say Mr. Robinson approached members of Turning Point USA, the conservative group founded by Mr. Kirk, hours before the shooting. He also had a brief encounter after Mr. Kirk was killed with a police officer who was providing extra security on campus, according to the investigator’s testimony.
Mr. Robinson, 23, faces a charge of aggravated murder that could carry the death penalty. He has not yet entered a plea.
Here are three takeaways from Day 2 of the hearing, which is scheduled to continue on Wednesday.
‘Cop intuition’ near the crime scene
As a manhunt was underway for Mr. Kirk’s assassin on the night of Sept. 10, a gray Dodge Challenger rolled up to a stoplight at the edge of campus, less than a half-mile from the crime scene.
New surveillance video played in court on Tuesday showed the driver of the car trying to turn right onto campus, but the vehicle pulled away after a police officer briefly spoke with the person at the wheel.
That driver was Tyler Robinson, according to testimony on Tuesday from Sgt. David Hull with the Utah Department of Public Safety, who was a lead investigator into Mr. Kirk’s killing in a previous role with the State Bureau of Investigation.
He said a local police officer, who was shown on video handling traffic control, had jotted down Mr. Robinson’s license plate number after the encounter, apparently spurred on by his “cop intuition.”
It was not clear what Mr. Robinson and the officer said to each other in the encounter, but the officer later recounted that he believed the driver was indeed Mr. Robinson. The car was registered to him.
About 22 hours after that interaction with the officer, Mr. Robinson turned himself in to the police, after being convinced by his parents and a family friend to do so.
Contact with Turning Point members and a change of clothes
The young man in gray shorts and a red T-shirt looked like any other college student when he pulled into a parking garage at Utah Valley University at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 10. With a backpack draped over his shoulders, he crisscrossed the sunny campus, and even stopped for lunch at a Chick-fil-A.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that the man in the video was Tyler Robinson, and that his innocuous appearance concealed a plan to kill.
Sergeant Hull offered a beat-by-beat account of the figure’s movements across campus in testimony, saying he had walked to the amphitheater where Mr. Kirk had been set to hold an event, and also made contact with representatives from Turning Point USA.
Mr. Robinson drove away at about 9:25 a.m. and returned to campus on foot, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and walked with a noticeable stiff limp, potentially from a firearm concealed in his clothing, Sergeant Hull said.
Video footage later captured a figure — investigators said in testimony that it was Mr. Robinson — scurrying across the gravel-covered roof of a campus building, then lying down in a sniper position moments before the shooting.
The figure then moved to the opposite edge of the roof, apparently carrying a long object, jumped into the grass, and slipped away into a wooded area bordering a neighborhood close to campus.
DNA on a towel and a screwdriver
Prosecutors introduced an F.B.I. report into evidence linking Mr. Robinson to DNA found on a towel that was wrapped around a rifle found in the wooded area near campus.
The report also indicated that Mr. Robinson’s DNA was on a screwdriver left on the rooftop from where prosecutors say the assassin fired. The ostensible purpose of the screwdriver has not yet been made clear.
That evidence was challenged at length by Mr. Robinson’s lawyers, who called their first witness, a forensic analyst in the F.B.I.’s DNA lab, and hammered her over the fine details of DNA analysis.
The analyst, Amanda Bakker, was the fourth person to testify in the hearing, which is set to resume on Wednesday at 1 p.m. Mountain time.
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