The man arrested for killing US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk is not cooperating with authorities, but investigators are working to establish a motive for the shooting by talking to his friends and family, Utah governor Spencer Cox said on Sunday.
Cox said the accused gunman, Tyler Robinson, 22, would be formally charged on Tuesday. He remains in custody in Utah.
Investigators have yet to piece together why Robinson allegedly scaled a rooftop at Utah Valley University during an outdoor event and shot Kirk in the neck at long range last Wednesday.
Kirk, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump and co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was killed by a single rifle shot during the event attended by 3,000 people in Orem, about 65km south of Salt Lake City.
The killing fuelled fears of a spike in political violence in the US and an ever-deepening divide between the left and the right.
Robinson has not confessed to investigators, Cox told the ABC program This Week.
“He is not cooperating, but all the people around him were cooperating, and I think that's very important,” the Republican governor said.
One person who is apparently talking to investigators is Robinson's roommate, who was also a romantic partner, Cox said, citing the FBI. Cox described the roommate as “a male transitioning to female” and said the roommate has been “incredibly cooperative.”
Reuters has not been able to locate the roommate or representatives for the roommate to seek comment. Reuters could not determine who is serving as Robinson's legal representative.
Asked on CNN's State of the Union programme whether the roommate's gender identity is relevant to the investigation, Cox said: “That's what we're trying to figure out. It's easy to draw conclusions from that. We've got all the shell casings and other forensic evidence that is coming in and trying to piece all of those things together.”
Investigators found messages engraved into four bullet casings which included references to memes and video game in-jokes. An affidavit filed by authorities in the case described the messages. One inscription, according to the affidavit, read “Hey fascist. Catch” followed by a combination of directional arrows, an apparent reference to a sequence of button presses that unleashes a bomb in a popular video game.
Another casing, according to the affidavit, read, “If you read This, you are gay Lmao”, short for “laughing my ass off”. Kirk's charged rhetoric, which often involved anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-immigrant comments, attracted legions of conservatives, but also engendered strong feelings from liberals and drew widespread criticism.
Robinson, a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship programme at Dixie Technical College, part of Utah's public university system, was taken into custody at his parents' house, about 420km southwest of the crime scene after a 33-hour manhunt.
Relatives and a family friend alerted authorities that he had implicated himself in the crime, Cox said previously.
While Robinson was raised by religious parents in a deeply conservative region of the state, “his ideology was very different from his family”, Cox said on Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press programme, without going into specifics.
State records show Robinson was a registered voter but not affiliated with any political party. A relative told investigators Robinson had grown more political in recent years and had once discussed with another family member their dislike for Kirk and his viewpoints, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Robinson was “not a fan” of Kirk's, Cox said on Sunday. The killing has stirred outrage among Kirk's supporters and condemnation of political violence across the ideological spectrum.
Trump has blamed “the radical left” for Kirk's death, despite a lack of evidence, even as he and his allies have often invoked violent rhetoric against their opponents.
“The problem is on the left,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.
“A lot of people you would traditionally say are on the left (are) under investigation.”
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who faced an arson attack in April, said Trump had an obligation to lower the temperature.
“Violence transcends party lines, and the way to address it and have true peaceful debate is for leaders to speak and act with moral clarity. That needs to start with the president,” he said on social media.
Cox assigned some blame to social media, saying it has played a “direct role” in every political assassination attempt in recent years.
Trump has credited Kirk with driving young voters to conservatism. His Turning Point movement said it has more than 800 chapters across college campuses. Kirk's widow on Friday said the movement's efforts would go forward.
A memorial event for Kirk will be held on September 21 in Glendale, Arizona, his organisation said.
Reuters
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