The 911 calls after the fatal shooting of conservative instigator Charlie Kirk revealed shocking details from the incident that occurred on Wednesday.
NBC News in Utah accessed the audio of 20 calls emergency responders received between 12.24 pm and 12.57 pm local time.
“I saw everything,” said a man, almost out of breath, who said he saw Kirk getting shot in the neck and then being rushed off in a black SUV, which ground to a halt at one point. “Right in the neck… so I don’t think he has long,” he said.
When the 911 operator asked about the shooter, the caller responded that he had “no clue”. Kirk “was facing the courtyard and the shot hit the left of his neck,” he added,
A distraught father also called dispatch, saying that his daughter was at UVU and that there was an active shooter there. “She was pretty hysterical, but sounds like she’s in a building with a bunch of other people now. But she said she doesn’t think that they’ve gotten him yet,” the recording went, reported NBC News.
Another mother in panic asked the 911 responder if it was a bad idea to text her daughter at the scene because “her phone will make noise”.
Fast forward to the weekend, and the days-long manhunt resulted in the FBI arresting Tyler Robinson as the prime suspect.
The conservative Robinson family, part of the suburban Utah community, expressed shock at the events that unfolded, now surrounding the “considerate” and “squeaky clean” youth—accused of murdering Kirk.
Robinson was arrested on alleged charges of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice, according to a probable cause affidavit, with the charges to be officially slapped next week.
Given that the victim was a far-right conservative activist, local media in the US and social media were quick to blame those with an opposing political stance. Instagram and TikTok filled with demands to “deport the shooter” Utah Governor Spencer Cox even went on to describe the Kirk shooting as a “political assassination.”
However, once it was revealed that the suspect was a Caucasian from a conservative family, the noise in social media surrounding the demand to “deport” and “detain” suddenly died down.
On Wednesday, a student at UVU asked Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?”
“Too many,” Kirk retorted. Encore. Applause. Then the bullet hit.
The empathy surrounding the Kirk shooting has already split the internet.
“That is a prudent deal,” Turning Point US founder Charlie Kirk defended gun rights while addressing the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church, “It’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given right.” Now, Kirk is, sadly, among them.