(NEXSTAR) – The Governor of Utah announced arrest of a suspect in the fatal shooting of conservative personality Charlie Kirk at a press conference Friday morning.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We got him,” Gov. Spencer Cox said at the start of a press conference.
Cox identified the suspect at Tyler Robinson, saying it was a family member who reached out and “implied” that Robinson may have been connected to the shooting. A law enforcement official previously told the Associated Press that Robinson was a 22-year-old resident of Utah.
Cox said investigators learned from Robinson’s family that he had “become more political over the years.” One person told detectives that Robinson had also recently mentioned that he was aware of Kirk’s then-planned event at Utah Valley University.
Cox also said that authorities had recovered the weapon used in the shooting, where they learned that messages had been inscribed on a spent bullet casing, as well as other unfired bullet casings.
According to Cox, the spent casing read, “Notices bulges OWO what’s this?” An unfired bullet casing had a message reading, “Hey fascist! Catch!” and included an “up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol and three down arrow symbols,” Cox said. A third unfired casing contained a portion of the lyrics to “Bella Ciao,” a song often associated with the Italian resistance during Nazi occupation in WWII. And the last casing Cox described was inscribed with language reading, “If you read this you are gay lmao.”
When asked, Cox said the significance of the inscriptions would be left up for interpretation, but said the “fascist” inscription “speaks for itself.” (Online gamers familiar with the video game “Helldivers 2” have also suggested that the arrows are a reference to a code used for dropping a specific type of bomb.)
Cox, a Republican, called Kirk’s killing an “attack on the American experiment,” and he urged a new generation to “choose a different path.”
Robinson is believed to have acted alone, and the investigation is ongoing, Cox said. The governor added that Cox was not a student at UVU, where the shooting took place Wednesday.
Friday’s press conference came only hours after President Trump revealed that “someone very close” to the suspect had turned him in.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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