The pictures of Tyler Robinson posted by his mother on Facebook show a typical college student: clean cut, wearing a baseball cap and Converse sneakers, barely distinguishable from most of his classmates.
Yet this is the man who investigators have accused of killing US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump and one of America’s most prominent rightwing influencers.
The 22-year-old, who lived in Utah’s Washington County with his family, was taken into custody about 33 hours after Kirk was shot on Wednesday, an event that sparked a large-scale manhunt and raised fears about an upsurge in political violence in the country.
Little is known about his possible motive, but Utah governor Spencer Cox on Friday said investigators had interviewed a family member “who stated that Robinson had become more political in recent years”.
The person said he had attended a family dinner prior to Kirk’s killing and mentioned in a conversation with another family member that the activist was coming to Utah Valley University (UVU), according to Cox.
“They talked about why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints he had,” Cox said.
However, there is little evidence Robinson was engaged in politics. He was a registered voter but was not affiliated with a political party, according to state voter records.
There is also little in his family’s social media presence to indicate a propensity for violence. Photos posted on Facebook by his mother, a social worker at a non-profit healthcare company, are largely innocuous, showing the family at Halloween parties, or on vacation in Alaska, the Caribbean and Disneyland.
A 2017 post shows them at a military facility, posing with assault rifles. Tyler Robinson is shown smiling as he holds the handles of a 50-calibre heavy machine gun.
The Financial Times could not independently verify the pictures, most of which were deleted on Friday.
The family lives in a suburb of St George, a city in the southern part of Utah about a three-and-a-half hour drive away from the UVU campus where Kirk was killed.
Robinson was not a student at UVU: he briefly attended Utah State University for one semester in 2021, according to a statement from USU on Friday, on a prestigious academic scholarship, He is currently enrolled as a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship programme at Dixie Technical College in St George.
One video circulating on social media platforms on Friday and apparently posted by his mother appeared to show him reading out a letter confirming he had received USU’s four-year award.
“The value of this scholarship is approximately $32,000,” he is shown saying. He then whoops with joy and his mother is heard cheering in the background.
In another entry from August 2020, his mother posted what appears to be a college aptitude test score for Robinson that would put him in the top 1 per cent of test takers, according to recent averages.
Cox said that on Thursday evening, a family member called a family friend who in turn called the Washington County’s Sheriff’s Office “with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident”.
Law enforcement officials confirmed it was Robinson’s father who had tipped off the police. Cox thanked the family for “doing the right thing”, adding that a “friend” also helped.
The governor added investigators had found messages written on the casings of the bullets in the Mauser rifle allegedly used in the shooting which appear to suggest a political motive.
Cox said one inscription on an unfired casing read: “Hey fascists! Catch!” accompanied by arrows pointed up, right and down. Those could be a reference to a sequence of moves in the video game Helldivers that release a bomb in an air strike.
The governor said another inscription on an unfired casing read: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao” — an apparent reference to the anthem of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the second world war. The third unfired casing was inscribed with the words: “If you read this, you are gay LMAO [laughing my ass off].”
Cameron Roden, an official with the Utah Department of Public Safety, said Robinson was facing multiple felony charges including aggravated murder and obstruction of justice.