A person who witnessed Charlie Kirk’s assassination has revealed exactly what he saw that day, during a preliminary hearing.
Tyler Robinson, 23, is currently facing faces seven charges including aggravated murder and obstruction of justice after allegedly attempting to dispose of evidence, after the shooting at Utah Valley University on September 10, where Charlie Kirk, prominent right-wing influencer, was shot in the neck and died.
Kirk was shot from a rooftop approximately 410 feet away, and the shooter was able to escape. After the shooting, a large-scale manhunt began. Robinson turned himself in 36 hours after the attack.
Prosecutors claim Robinson drove three hours to the university campus with the intention of killing Kirk. He was ultimately identified after his father recognized what police described as a “unique” rifle in images released during the manhunt.
A former campus police officer who witnessed the assassination testified Monday about what he says he saw that day, including what appeared to be signs of a sniper’s position near the scene. The testimony came during a preliminary hearing.
“A chaos situation”
Former Utah Valley University Officer Christopher Bagley told the court he responded immediately after the shooting and later discovered a gravel-covered rooftop nearby that caught his attention.
“It looks like a sniper pad,” Bagley said, according to PBS, adding that such a setup is identified by “you’ve got markings of elbows, knees and feet.”
Bagley also described the moments when the shooting unfolded. He said the sound immediately stood out to him because it resembled a rifle shot rather than the noise typically associated with a handgun, according to UNILAD.
According to Bagley, the distinctive cracking sound alerted him to the possibility that the bullet had been fired from a rifle.
Steven Howard, a ballistics expert, later explained to the Daily Mail that rifle bullets carry significantly more energy than handgun rounds and can become badly damaged upon impact.
“Rifles have so much velocity and therefore so much energy, that the bullets a lot of times damage themselves to the point that you can’t realistically match them up because they’re so damaged,” Howard said, according to UNILAD.
Bagley, who became the prosecution’s first witness, also recalled seeing Kirk in the moments after he was struck: “I saw him go to the left … I could no longer see the right side of his body. Then everybody started getting up and started to run, more of a chaos situation,” he testified.
As Bagley recounted the shooting, Kirk’s parents, Kathryn and Robert, along with his widow, Erika, chose to leave the courtroom, according to the outlet.
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