Two people who were detained and later released following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk faced a number of threats and scrutiny even after police said they were not suspects, police said Thursday.
“These individuals were not suspects. They were people of interest,” Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said. “They don’t deserve that harassment.”
Both the FBI and the state’s public safety department issued a joint statement Wednesday night with the full names of both people, saying they were initially taken in as suspects.
By then, photos of one of those men being handcuffed shortly after Kirk was shot Wednesday at Utah Valley University had been circulating online with his name. The name of the second man also began appearing on social media sites.
The person who killed Kirk remained at large and unidentified Thursday, more than 24 hours after the shooting.
Felipe Rodriguez, a former New York City police detective, said it’s dangerous for law enforcement to release the names of people who have only been detained.
“That’s highly unusual, especially in this age of doxing and online threats,” said Rodriguez, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We have to be held at a higher standard and be careful about what information we put out there.”
Department policies vary. Los Angeles police regulations, for example, say a suspect’s name should not be released until the person is arrested and booked.
At one point Wednesday night, there was confusion about whether anyone was in custody or if the shooter was still at large as law enforcement provided changing and difficult-to-reconcile information.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who earlier had posted on social media that “the subject for the horrific shooting” had been taken into custody, later wrote that the person had been released after being questioned. Utah authorities separately said a person of interest was in custody, but it wasn’t clear if that was the same person Patel referenced as having been released.
Utah public safety officials later said neither of the people taken into custody was determined to have any connection to the shooting.
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