I'm Kristen. Welcome. We're continuing NBC's breaking news coverage of the shooting of conservative political activist and media personality Charlie Kirk. Here is what we know so far.
Kirk, an ally of President Trump, was shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University this afternoon. His organization says he has been hospitalized, but we do not yet know his condition. Now, according to the university, a suspect who fired from a building about 200 yards away is in custody. We do have some video of the incident.
We're play the moments leading up to the shooting, including the sound of the gunfire. We do want to warn you that the footage is graphic. Do you know how many masses there have been in America over the last 10 years? Counts that are not coming day violence.
Great. Just horrifying. And there now you're looking at video of the scene in the immediate aftermath of the incident. As the crowd of thousands fled the sound of gunfire for where?
Utah conversation. Jason Chaffet says he was at that event and described the horror. He witnessed. The first question, which was a religious question, and then he got to the second question, which was about 30 minutes into his presentation, 2:30 local time.
And. And the question was about transgender shooters. Mass killings versus people that were transgender. And when that happened, when that question came out, and you know he's gonna have the interaction, one shot.
I was watching Charlie. I can't say that I saw blood. I can't say that I saw him get hit, but I did see him fall immediately backwards into his left. And I can just hope and pray that somehow he survived that.
You can hear how shaken former congressman Jason Chaffis was there describing what he witnessed. Another man who says he was at the event described not only the shooting, but the chaos that ensued and the arrest of the suspected gunman. We heard a big loud shot. I saw a bunch of blood come out of Charlie.
I saw his body kind of kick back and go limp and everybody drop to the ground. And luckily there were no other bullets sprayed into the crowd. Lots of screaming, lots of yelling, lots of bodies on top of each other. And after a couple minutes, people got up and started kind of running, getting out of there.
I started to move quickly and then kind of realized I said, I think we're okay. And I kind of stopped walking away and I kind of turned around and all of a sudden I saw officers walking with this very elderly gentleman with white hair. And they had him arrested, had him on his knees. He was screaming about, you know, his rights and all that stuff.
And they cut him and put him away. And you know, about 23 other people just said, yeah, that's the guy. That's, that was the shooter. And again, you can just hear the fear in those witnesses accounts of what happened.
We are seeing an outpouring of support on social media for Kirk, including from the President who posted this quote, we must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom, God bless him. On Capitol Hill, members of both parties reacting in real time to the horrific incident. Charlie is a very, actually very good friend of mine.
It's, it's, here's your death. For he and his family, it's another horrible act of political violence that has no place in our country. And it's just at kind of a loss of words. It is a, you know, a horrendous thing to see.
And it happens all too often. Shocking, tragic. There is just no justification for the political violence that we're seeing in this country. Bipartisan outpouring of horror, outrage and prayers going to Charlie Kirk and his family right now.
We just got a statement from the university actually saying, quote, we don't have a suspect in custody. Again, the university is now clarifying that there is no suspect in custody. That is a significant development because initially we had been told that there was one in custody. Joining me now is our team reporters, NBC News national law enforcement and intelligence correspondent Tom Winter, NBC News correspondent Liz Kreutz, NBC News chief Justice and national affairs correspondent Kelly o', Donnell, and Jim Kavanaugh, retired ATF special agent in charge and an NBC News law enforcement analyst.
Thanks to all of you for being here on a somber, horrific day for this country. Tom, let me start with you. What more do we know about the shooting and now the university clarifying and there's no suspect in custody. Yeah, that's right, Kristen.
Some developments in me. We're also speaking with our colleague Tom Yamis about this, that we're not getting any official information either from our west coast crime reporter, our colleague Andrew Blankstein, nor myself out here on the east, either from federal law enforcement officials or state and local law enforcement officials about the individual that initially was reported about the university to be in custody. And as I mentioned, I've seen a number of these incidents where somebody is initially taken into custody, but it's not the person that's ultimately responsible for the incident or is the person that's ultimately charged, and that's been born true here, that the person that they initially fought was in custody, that was seen on videotape in handcuffs apparently is not the person that is responsible. So Brazilian gets more information from law enforcement.
They've yet to hold a briefing specifically, a little over two hours since the shooting was initially reported. Kristen so there's some questions. The university did say that the shooting happened approximately 200 yards from the stage. I would put an asterisk on that as well, that unless there's a shell case or a weapon that's found there, when you have a kind of a triangle setup, as you do, it's easy for people to kind of misconstrue where gunshots are coming from.
I've been at law enforcement shooting ranges and have experienced the same thing. It's not always initially clear where a shot is being fired from, just as a way of kind of explaining it. Taking a step back from the kind of the minute to minute, the second to second updates here, Kristen, this is obviously very disturbing on a number of levels. First, we're talking about an individual who's been shot here, clearly just based on the video alone is going to need a miracle.
Let's hope he gets it to be able to have his life saved here. He is a father, he does have kids. But certainly from a standpoint of where we are in this country, the fact that he's a conservative activist, he's a huge following, a huge amount of supporters, and he has a lot of people that don't like what he has to say either. KRISTEN and that's something that's got law enforcement so concerned here about this trend.
Now that we've seen. We've seen the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband. We've seen the incident involving an attempted arson of a Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro. We've seen two attempted assassinations of a person running for president, now the president of the United States, Donald Trump.
And we've seen a host of targeted killings as well, as well as the shooting and kind of a spree, if you will, this summer that we saw in Minnesota in July involving state lawmakers that were deliberately targeted there. It is the fact that these incidents are picking up as far as the frequency of them that also has law enforcement just so concerned in this country. The statistics bear it out, the anecdotal information bears it out. And in many of the cases that we've seen, if not all of them, there's nothing that sticks out as a potential tripwire where you could look back and say, well, if police had looked at this or the FBI looked at that, there would have been a way to determine that somebody was about to do something.
It doesn't appear based on the laws that we currently have in the country and the rules by which law enforcement operates that they would be able to do that. And I'm trying to remember if any of the incidents I've described were involved individuals that used a weapon that should not have been able to purchase it or possess it. So it's possible. I'm forgetting an incident or two.
But generally speaking, the weapons have been purchased lawfully, and in some cases, they've involved fire and arson. So obviously, this is something that has everybody concerned. And when you have somebody like Charlie Kirk, who is the obvious support of the President of the United States, who's tweeted out in support of him today, you've talked about members of Congress and people now from both sides of the aisle, elected officials and commentators saying, stop. This is.
You're looking at what the president had to say here, God bless him. When you're looking at somebody whose ideology and Charlie Kirk is so in political opinions are so closely mirroring the President of the United States, there's a lot of concern about this, this type of incident occurring and what could come out of this next. So I don't think this is a very hopeful message, Kristen, but it's not a hopeful time in law enforcement circles of people that I've talked to. Well, Tom, really remarkable breakdown of everything we know so far.
Stand by. I want to go to Kelly o', Donnell, who has been tracking these developments as well. Kelly, this is someone who is a close ally of President Trump's, someone who the vice president has appeared on his podcast. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California has appeared on Charlie Kirk's podcast, among those calling for prayers for his survival.
Talk a little bit about who Charlie Kirk is and what he has meant to the Madam Movement. Well, Kristen, this is just a tragic set of circumstances involving this powerful, influential, and therefore controversial young figure. Charlie Kirk has been on the scene for a number of years. He has moved from being just a voice in the conservative movement to being at the forefront driving interest and attention, especially among young men, to the MAGA movement, to President Trump.
And so much of that is the story of the last election cycle that led to the president's return to power. Charlie Kirk has been influential. He has been provocative. He has taken positions that certainly break through, not only in galvanizing those who agree with him, but fueling those who do not.
And this kind of circumstance is the event where he was participating is his standard fare. Going to campuses, going to places where especially young people are there taking their questions active debate in real time that is supposed to be a part of what democracy is in an active, engaged way. And we have seen how violence has continued to break through in this particular season of our political and national dialogue, and we've seen it over time where those figures who do have a way of both galvanizing and angering those in public become targets. And that is apparently what we believe is the likely scenario here.
As we understand it at this point, there is no suspect in custody. Therefore, motives cannot be determined about what happened here. We've been working with our law enforcement sources, our political sources, always important to remind people, and Tom certainly outlined this, and our coverage is doing the same. These are chaotic circumstances.
There will be individual witnesses who will see and perceive things. They'll have one thread of the puzzle. There will be others who might be swept up, whether taken into custody or a part of getting information to law enforcement. And it simply takes time to try to discern what was going on here.
And there's been limited information from an official source. We've been talking to the highest levels of the Justice Department and law enforcement, and they're just not in a position yet to move this forward in terms of a better understanding of who may have been responsible or what the status is. And of course, there is also the separate track of waiting for any update on the medical condition of Charlie Kirk. We have seen an outpouring which is in and of itself almost a measure of the kind of impact he has had in his adult, young adult life.
He's in his early 30s, married, father of small children, in the sense that there are so many prayers coming forward. He often talks about his faith and certainly in a religious community of those who are believers and politically active. There are a lot of prayers being offered for Charlie Kirk also from across the political spectrum, people who believe that violence is never the appropriate response to active and engaged political discourse. So you've got liberals and office holders across the scale responding, offering prayers and concern for Charlie Cook.
We are in a moment, Kristen, you and I've covered so many of these instances. I can also remember going all the way back to Gabby Giffords, who I had covered in Congress. And then she was the subject of an assassination attempt in a shooting in Arizona all those years ago that killed a number of people. She has been a valiant survivor of gun violence.
And then, of course, earlier we saw the attack on the Minnesota state lawmakers. We've seen the other attempts, and obviously we have extensively cover the attempts on the life of President Trump. So we are In a point where violence is taking hold in our political space. And right now, as these events are unfolding, we're trying to be measured and careful about getting the facts and bringing our audience the details that we can report and acknowledging.
We have many questions still to go as we are reaching out to our sources and trying to gain more information. Kelly o' Donnell Continuing to cover all angles of this horrific day, Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been shot at an event in Utah. Speaker Mike Johnson says he's about to call for a moment of silence on the House floor for Charlie Kirk. He is calling on everyone to condemn political violence.
He's asking for prayers, and he has said, quote, this has to stop. As we await that, I want to go now to Taylor and Kaylie Dufour, who witnessed today's incident. They joined me by phone. Thank you both for being here.
I'm so very sorry for the horror that you have witnessed today. Thank you. Taylor, let me start with you. What exactly did you see today?
What unfolded? Everything was going great. You know, it was actually a fun event. Things were.
Things were going great. The conversation was calm, and then it just. It just happened out of nowhere. And, you know, the only thing I could take in time was to get my wife to the ground and get on top of her and just look around and see if there's anybody else who needed help.
And, yeah, it was everything we could do just to get out of there. And lot of women and children and people that were just, you know, in chaos and are just scared for their life. Haley, did you actually see Charlie Kirk get shot? Not get shot, but we saw him fall out of his chair.
And Taylor's describing the horror, the fear that everyone felt. He says he jumped on top of you. What was going through your mind while this unfolded? It's really hard to think, but you just kind of stare at everyone around you and you hope that they're looking for the shooter and they're all okay around you, and you just look for an exit, and you wonder.
You see a man who looks maybe of, like, past military experience, and he's telling everyone to lay on the ground, but you just want to crawl or run to the exit. You don't know what to choose. You don't know whether to run past the mom with her three little girls, and then you see teenagers on their phone alone, crying. All you can do is just ask if everyone's okay and just keep running.
There should never be this much hate that people in a public setting have to fear for their lives. You're absolutely right, Haley. There just should never be this much hate. It's so well put.
At a moment of such grief for you, Taylor, talk about why you wanted to be there. Charlie Kirk is known for these events where he's fostering public debate. He's taking questions. They may be tough questions, they may be questions he like, questions he doesn't like.
But talk about why you wanted to be there and the importance of his events. We followed him for a long time. We both try to look at you and everything we can on for political views. And we just love Charlie.
He brings a great crowd. He brings a great. A lot of good people together. And he's, you know, got a great honest opinion and I feel like he's.
I got him. He just. We just love him. We just love everything about Charlie.
He's incredible. And Haley, he's a young father and I think everyone right now across the country is just praying for him and praying for his family. When you think about his impact not only on this society, on our political universe, but on his family, what goes through your head? We literally pulled into the event and said we hope his wife may come sit behind bulletproof glass because we can't trust people.
And I. I couldn't allow my husband to go and sit in a stadium full of people. And you're just one sitting duck. You don't know.
My boys are teenagers. They follow Charlie. They like. They like how he's honest and he doesn't.
He doesn't have to yell to get his side across. And he engages teenagers to speak for themselves. I think that's how we all should be. Taylor, we are hearing reports to Haley's point.
He doesn't look like he was sitting behind bulletproof glass. And I'm hearing reports that there wasn't security to get to the event. Can you help us understand? Was there security?
Did you have to get checked out by authorities before you walked in? No, there was no security. There were no metal detectors, anybody in the world to park anywhere on the university and walks right in. So, yeah, there was.
It's just incredible that, like, we actually talked about how can he have bring so much debate and have you. He does have a lot of haters. There's a lot of people who don't agree with him or you don't like him. And so we talked about him later, like, it's incredible that we're able to bring two different political views or two different types of humans or whatever together, and we don't have to sit and stress and worry about that happening, and then this happens.
It's. It's really sad. Hayley, the fact that you said, walking into this event, I hope he's sitting behind bulletproof glass, and then you're walking into this event and realizing, as Taylor just laid out, there wasn't security. Is that upsetting to you?
What's your perspective on that? Yeah, it is upsetting to me. I wish we didn't have to think that way. I love that he's never had to think that way.
Feeling safe and comfortable, especially in Utah. I wish. I wish we didn't have to be afraid to be in public and speak political views on that point. Taylor.
Haley, I think, makes such a profound point. We should be able to have political discourse without political violence. The fact that this is taking place, the two assassination attempts against President Trump, the lawmakers in Minnesota. It has to end.
It doesn't. It doesn't have to end. There's. We love everybody, and that's how the world should be.
And everybody should be able to be and choose what they want. And, yeah, the violence needs to stop. There's too much violence. There's too much hate.
There's too much, you know, division in the world. Haley, if you could just talk to this whole country, people who take their political views too far. What is your message to people today having lived through and witnessed this horror that you have? After witnessing what I witnessed today, it was even hard to think about myself.
I just looked at the teenagers in the face and how scared they were. And I wish. I wish we could all be emotionally responsible and mature and protect those around us and know that that could be our child. I'm grateful I didn't bring my children.
I'm so grateful they didn't come. I wish our country could pull together and protect each other and help each other. You're grateful your kids didn't come? What.
What are you gonna tell your kids about this day, Haley? I honestly don't know how to tell them. I wanna. I wanna tell them they're not allowed to go to concerts.
I thought Utah was better than this. We were born and raised here. I won't let them go to political events. That's sad.
Taylor, what is it you want your children to know in the wake of this day? I immediately called my son because I had just barely. I was actually filming, and then I started filming like, hey, dude, where's the Charlie Kerr? Because he was gonna come with us, and I sent him a video.
And right after I sent that video, I put my phone in my pocket. And then that's when the shot was fired. And so it was immediately, as soon as we got out, it was, please don't. I did call him and say, please don't come.
You know, there's obviously been a shooting. And it's just sad because he's like, him and all of his buddies are like, man, we love those rallies. We love to be able to go and can't believe it. You know, it's sad that this world can't just get along.
Taylor and Hayley Dufour, I don't know how you found the strength to talk to us, but we are so grateful to have your perspective and we are so, so sorry for what you have been through and we really appreciate your both being here. Thank you both so very much. Thank you. Thanks.
Let's go back to Tom Winter. Tom, so painful to hear from those two witnesses. You can hear how shaken they are. This has clearly changed them, changed their view of participating in one of the most important parts of this country, which is political discourse and these types of political rallies.
But they said something that was so, I think, important as we move forward, which is that they said there wasn't security at this event. Tom, what are you hearing about that? Yeah, I want to get that in a second. Kristen did when I tell you the president United States has apparently talked to the New York Post, asked if Kirk was in the hospital, a president from the article, President Trump told the Post somberly, quote, he's not doing well.
Pause. Yes, it looks very bad, end quote. Adding that he was feeling, quote, not good about the shooting. He says he was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person.
All that according to President Trump, to the New York Post, apparently speaking with him after this incident. So from a security perspective, you know, Kristen, I think those interviews that you just did with eyewitnesses, your reflection on those interviews after you stop speaking with them and then into the security is the big question because obviously we're looking at a scenario here where now our political events the same thing. I remember hearing the exact same thing sitting in the exact Same Studio on July 13th of last year, excuse me, after then candidate, now president of the United States, Donald Trump was shot in Butler Pen. The exact same sentiments were uttered there by the people that had to witness that hear those gunshots.
And we're in the crowd now we're hearing them again today. That was a Secret Service protection. Now you start to go out this even a political event. Certainly he's a conservative commentator.
He's talking about politics, he's talking about things in society for certain. But this is not something who's actively running for office. So when you're in a scenario now where people talking about things, in having a dialogue and discourse, he's obviously got a lot of followers, obviously has a lot of support, and he's got his detractors for sure that if we're at a point where people can't have these types of open discussions on a campus where he's fielding questions for people that are coming up to the stage just 10, 20ft from him and asking questions in a microphone. If you can't have those type of discussions in an open society without some sort of a Secret Service level protection, that's gonna be a big problem going forward because the cost of that is, as you well know from covering so many political events of your career is enormous.
So that's a big question going forward. I think it appears that he had some personal security that was there, according to the university, that security was involved in getting him off the stage quickly after he was fired upon. But all the security in the world, depending upon the type of event in the arrangement, is not necessarily gonna help you unless you hard lock down areas. I think it just raises enormous questions for us going forward here.
We've seen incidents just in the last year or two where we've had the speaker of the House at the time, Nancy Pelosi, an individual get inside of her home and attack her husband. I mean, that's a situation we would think security would be quite high just given the high profile nature of the speaker of the House of Representatives, let alone somebody like Nancy Pelosi, who'd been Congress for so long and certainly was a polarizing figure to some. So, yes, huge security questions going forward. Law enforcement is acutely aware of the threat.
This is going to be a response. It's going to need more than just more police and more barricades. This is going to have to be does society want to do here going forward? That's at least what people in the law enforcement community believe.
They, they think this really is going to take a lot more than just, well, if we put a few more police officers here and do this here, it's just not going to be practical going forward. This is going to require a more wholesome approach. All right, Tom Winter, please continue to stand by for us as you bring us your updated reporting. I want to go to Capitol Hill and Melanie Zenona.
Mel, I understand that House Speaker Mike Johnson just spoke, just called for A moment of silence. I want to play a little bit of the video and then talk to you on the other side about the broader reaction that we are hearing from lawmakers. Let's hear from Speaker Johnson now. We, we just want to make a brief statement here.
And I'm going to go and ask my colleagues to join in a moment of silence for our dear friend Charlie Kirk. We ask everyone to pray for him and his family. I'm just going to say state the obvious here. This is detestable what's happened.
Political violence has become all too common in American society, and this is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country, our Judeo Christian heritage, our civil society, our American way of life, and it must stop. We need every political figure, we need everyone who has a platform to say this loudly and clearly. We can settle disagreements and disputes in a civil manner and political violence must be called out.
It has to stop. Again, we ask for prayer. I'm going to leave the chamber here in a moment of silence, and we hope for the best betrayal. Mel, you can see the emotion in the House speaker.
It's written all over his face. You've been there talking to lawmakers. This is one of those moments that brings Democrats and Republicans together in just shared outrage that this is possible in 2025, that we are still dealing with these incidents of political violence and quite frankly, that they seem to only be on the rise. Yeah, that's exactly right, Kristen.
Members that we've been talking to, really on edge. Some of them visibly upset, tears in their eyes. And this is really hit close to home for a number of reasons. First of all, Charlie Kirk was really close with a number of members of Congress.
Obviously, from his work at Turning Point usa, he's trying to help win over younger voters. But he also helped recruit members to run for Congress, including Annapolina Luna. She's been particularly outraged and upset on social media and in the hallways just a few moments ago, blaming the left, blaming the media, but she's really upset about what's happening. Margaret Green from an office who's really close with her.
She actually interrupted a House Oversight Committee meeting to hold Luna silent and informed the committee that he had just a shot that happened just seconds after. Yeah. Kristen, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. We do have some breaking news and unfortunately, I do have to read this.
It is from President Trump, who just posted the great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youths in the United States of America. Better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me.
And now he is no longer with us. Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erica and family. Charlie, we love you. Mel this is such a somber day and it is so horrific to think that such a young father could be taken in this horrific manner, having a rally, political debate, doing what he loved, which was to debate and his life taken in this horrific, violent manner.
Mel, please continue with the reaction there. Members, like I said, are just completely rattled. I haven't been able to speak to anyone since this news just broke that he has passed away. But it doesn't change the facts here on Capitol Hill, which is that members are frightened.
They are worried about their own safety. This is something that has been a concern for members going on for years. Of course, back in 2017, there was the baseball shooting that almost took Steve's police's life. There was Gabby Gifford who shot the head, miraculously survived but nearly assassinated.
And over the years, the threats to members of Congress have been on the rise, political violence on the rise. They've taken steps here in Capitol Hill to try to, you know, make them safer. But it's a really difficult thing when you're going out to these events. It can be difficult.
There's, there's a lack of resources. Not everyone has a, you know, a detail like the president award and members of leadership. That's something that everyone wrestles with on a day to day basis. And so I think that's part of the reason, aside from Kirk's personal connections to members here on Capitol Hill, I think that also why it's getting so close to home for members.
So this is just really tragic, really horrific and something that is certainly reverberating here. And have a Kristen, Melanie Zenona, thank you so much for that. And we continue to track the reaction that is coming in. And again, President Trump announcing that Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator, is dead, killed earlier today at an event in Utah.
We have more now with this NBC News special report.