Charlie Kirk (R) and suspect in his shooting Tyler Robinson (L).
Credit: Reuters Photo
St. George: In the conservative southern Utah city where Tyler Robinson grew up, neighbors and classmates described him as a reserved, intelligent young man raised in a Republican family who was deeply interested in video games, comic books and current events.
On Friday afternoon, people who knew Robinson struggled to reconcile their memories of him and his seemingly ordinary suburban upbringing with his notorious new image: the latest face of political violence, accused of fatally shooting conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus this week in what authorities have called a political assassination.
“It’s really sad that someone with his mind put it to that sort of use,” said Keaton Brooksby, 22, a former high school classmate of Robinson’s.
But as elements of the nation’s political left and right scrambled for motives, the image that has initially emerged of Robinson is not at all clear. Neither is his trajectory from a scholarship-winning high school student to an apprentice electrician to a suspect.
Brooksby said that Robinson was generally considered a quiet pupil when they were growing up in the conservative St. George area, but one day in high school, the topic of the 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, came up during lunch. Few there knew exactly what had happened, but Robinson was sure of himself.
“He gave us a whole spiel on what happened,” Brooksby said. “I just remember thinking, he’s got a lot of information on this for someone who’s 14.”
Robinson is registered to vote in Utah, but he is not affiliated with a political party and had never voted in an election, according to the Washington County Clerk. His parents are registered Republicans, both with active hunting licenses in a part of the country known for its outdoor life, near Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks.
Social media photos posted by his family over the years show Robinson and his two younger brothers shooting and posing with guns.
Robinson surrendered to police near his hometown Thursday night after an intense, 33-hour search. A police officer wrote in an affidavit filed in court that one of Robinson’s family members had described him as growing “more political in recent years” and, during a recent dinner, had mentioned Kirk and his upcoming event at the Utah campus.
Officials said they found, left with the gun, unfired ammunition that had been engraved with jokes and slang from internet memes as well as the words, “hey fascist! CATCH!”