Charlie Kirk Murder: Trump Calls for Restraint, Police Appeal to Public... Where Is the Investigation on Friday?

A standard-bearer for Trump's youth, now seen as a "martyr" by the American right, Charlie Kirk was shot dead Wednesday in the neck while participating in a public debate at a university in Utah, in the western United States. While the identity and motives of the killer are still unknown, the FBI, the federal police, has described it as a "targeted" act.

On Thursday evening, Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox provided an update on the investigation, without revealing any major progress in the absence of any arrests.

"A lot of forensic evidence is currently being analyzed," Spencer Cox assured at a press conference. Warning against "misinformation," he appealed to the public, who have already provided 7,000 "leads and clues" to investigators.

"We cannot do our work without the help of the people," he pleaded. "We will catch this person," he vowed, promising to demand "the death penalty" against her.

For his part, Donald Trump, who had already blamed the "radical left" on Wednesday, is now calling for restraint. "He advocated for nonviolence. That's how I would like people to respond," the Republican president said Thursday, having announced earlier that he would posthumously award the 31-year-old victim the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"Charlie has become a martyr for free speech," said Carson Caines, a computer science student he met on the university campus the day after the tragedy. At 23, this "very angry" young Mormon, who forged his political conscience with Charlie Kirk's videos, admits he felt like "reacting physically" but "refuses to fuel the cycle of violence."

Police announced they had found the murder weapon in bushes, a rifle, a shoe print, and a palm print. Photographs of a suspect released by the FBI show a slender man wearing dark clothing, a long-sleeved sweater with an American flag, sunglasses, and a cap. Police also announced a reward of up to $100,000 for information related to the investigation.

Vice President JD Vance, who hailed Charlie Kirk as a "true friend," canceled his trip to the 9/11 commemorations in New York to meet with the deceased's family in Utah.

In a demonstration of the closeness between Charlie Kirk and the US executive, JD Vance, according to a video shared by the White House, helped carry the coffin a few meters to board his government plane. The plane then flew to Phoenix, Arizona, the headquarters of Turning Point USA, the youth movement that Charlie Kirk co-founded in 2012.

Charlie Kirk was being questioned about gun violence in the United States during a public debate on the campus of Utah Valley University when a shot rang out.

Hit in the neck by a bullet fired from a rooftop, he immediately collapsed. As the crowd panicked, news of the tragedy spread like wildfire across the United States, which has seen a surge in political violence in recent years.

Donald Trump himself was the victim of two assassination attempts during the last election campaign. This year, Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Melissa Hortman and her husband were killed, and another local elected official was seriously injured.