(OREM) A manhunt is underway on Thursday to find the murderer of the American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, faithful ally of President Donald Trump killed by ball in the midst of a public debate in a country that deplores a revival of political violence. The FBI published two photos of a person of interest on Thursday.
The 31-year-old Trumpist Youth Drapea holder was shot in the neck while participating in a meeting in front of around 3,000 people in a UTA university in the West of the United States.
If the murderer’s motivations are currently unknown, it is a “targeted” act that has shocked from the United States already torn apart by political tensions, said the FBI.
The photos of a person of interest published on the FBI account X show a man wearing a cap and black sunglasses. Federal police appeal “to the public to identify this person who interests the investigators in connection” with the murder.
“I can tell you that we found what we consider to be the weapon used yesterday. It is a powerful rifle, “said Robert Bohls, the director of the local antenna of the FBI, assuring that the authorities” did everything to find “the murderer.
Photo Bastien Inzaurralde, Agency France-Presse
The director of the local antenna of the FBI, Robert Bohls, and the commissioner of the Public Security Department of Utah, Beau Mason
Two people were arrested before being released, according to the same source.
President Trump implicated on Wednesday “the radical left” for the murder of the one he described as “martyr of truth and freedom”. “It is a dark moment for America,” he said, before announcing that he would give the victim to the victim the presidential medal of freedom posthumously.
Vice-president JD Vance, expected in Utah on Thursday to meet the family of the conservative influencer, paid tribute to “a real friend”.
Flags put at half mast
Political violence seems to intensify in the United States in recent years.
Donald Trump himself was the victim of two assassination attempts during the 2024 electoral campaign. This year, Melissa Hortman, elected Democrat in the Minnesota Parliament and her husband were killed by an author who also seriously injured another local elected official. The house of the governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro, elected from Jewish confession, was the target of a fire.
Utah republican governor Spencer Cox described the murder of “political assassination”, recalling that “the death penalty (was) still in force here, in the state of Utah”.
Several Trumpist figures have described Charlie Kirk as a “martyr” fell for the defense of conservative and Christian values. Foreign leaders of all stripes also condemned this murder, several qualifying him as “politics”.
“It is very frightening,” said AFP near the Samuel Kimball campus, an 18 -year -old computer engineering student who did not attend the intervention of Charlie Kirk, but feels “aligned with his values”.
“It gives me the impression that I should be very careful when I express my political opinions,” he added. “If I was someone who was thinking of doing politics, I would be afraid of being shot”.
President Trump ordered the half -mast of American flags in tribute to the one who had been an important cog in his last presidential campaign.
Photo Daniel Becerril, Reuters
A sign on which we can read “Thank you, Charlie” in front of the American flag at half mast of the White House.
“No place”
On the left, the unhappy candidate for the 2024 election, Kamala Harris, estimated that “political violence has (Vait) no room in America”.
Former President Joe Biden called for this type of violence “ceases immediately”, in unison with other figures on the left: Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and the governor of California Gavin Newsom.
Originally from the suburbs of Chicago, Christian and defender of the port of firearms, Charlie Kirk, father of two children had abandoned his studies to devote himself to activism.
He was at the head of a youth movement, Turning Point USA. Co-founded in 2012 by the influencer then aged 18, this association became in a decade the largest group of young conservatives in the United States.
It includes an army of enthusiastic activists, some of whom had been sent by bus to Washington to the demonstration of January 6, 2021 which had led to the invasion of the Capitol.
