FBI release photos of suspect in Charlie Kirk murder, recover rifle used in assassination

American authorities had new leads on Thursday in their search for the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk with the FBI releasing video stills of the suspected killer.

Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Salt Lake City office, said in a news conference that the gun that was recovered was a “high-powered bolt-action rifle,” and that it had been found in a wooded area in a neighborhood near the campus of Utah Valley University, where Kirk had been speaking to a large crowd on Wednesday afternoon local time.

Investigators “have good video footage of this individual,” said Beau Mason, Utah’s public safety chief. But he added that officials will release the images only if they cannot identify him. Officials referred to the shooter as a man throughout the news conference.

President Trump, an ally of Kirk’s, blamed the rhetoric of the “radical left” for Kirk’s killing, but investigators in Utah did not assign any possible motive.

They did share new details about his movements on Wednesday: The person arrived on campus shortly before noon and used a stairway to make his way to the roof of a campus building overlooking the site of Mr Kirk’s scheduled appearance, according to Mason.

After the shooting, a single shot that hit Kirk in the neck, the person jumped from the roof and fled to a nearby neighborhood, Mason said.

He added that the person being sought “blended in well” at the campus because he appeared “to be of college age.”

Kirk was shot dead about 20 minutes after he began speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He had been delivering remarks while sitting under a tent adorned with the slogan “The American Comeback.” About 3,000 people were in attendance, and six university police officers were working security at the event in addition to  Kirk’s own security.

Videos recorded before and after the shooting show a person on the roof of the Losee Center, more than 90m from where Kirk stood. In one video, an onlooker says they saw someone run across the roof and lie down. In a second video, the person can be seen rushing away from that spot immediately after the shooting.

Democrats and Republicans quickly denounced the shooting on social media and in Congress, where a moment of silence deteriorated into partisan acrimony. Trump ordered American flags to be lowered to half-staff until Sunday evening.

Kirk co-founded the youth activist group Turning Point USA in 2012, and had become a fixture on college campuses, where he hosted rallies, like the one in Utah, that often drew large crowds. He held significant influence in the White House.

Earlier, a Canadian man was falsely identified as the perpetrator of the attack.

MEPs clash on minute of silence

A few hours after Kirk was shot, Charlie Weimers from hard-right ECR group in the Parliament sent a plea to his colleagues to observe a minute of silence during Thursday’s plenary session in Strasbourg in Kirk’s memory.

The decision on whether to hold a minute of silence typically falls under the discretion of the President of the Parliament.

When Parliament resumed its session at noon on Thursday, Weimers took the floor with remarks praising Kirk before concluding: “I yield the rest of my time for a moment of silence.” Lawmakers from the parliament’s right-wing groups then stood up.

But Katarina Barley, the Parliament Vice-President preceding over the debate, intervened.

“We have discussed this, and you know that the president has said ‘No’ to a minute of silence,” she said to applause from the left-wing MEPs.

As Barley introduced the next point of order, right-wingers were loudly banging their tables in anger.

The European Parliament rules of procedure don’t allow MEPs to ‘yield’ their time – as it is known from the US Congress.