A witness has described the moment Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at a Utah Valley University event as “pretty scary stuff.” The 31-year-old conservative activist was addressing a crowd at an outdoor amphitheater in Orem when a single gunshot struck him in the neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eyewitness Justin Hicken told The Independent that the event lacked security measures such as metal detectors. “It’s a bummer because whoever did this was able to enter the premises with a firearm,” he said. Hicken estimated the crowd at 3,000 to 4,000 people “packed into a little outdoor amphitheater.”
According to Hicken, the shooting occurred after an attendee asked a question about mass shootings. “He got about 60 to 90 seconds into it, and that’s when the shot went off,” Hicken said. “I saw blood spurting from Charlie, his body kind of recoiled, everybody started screaming.”
Hicken described people dropping to the floor and a chaotic scene. When no second shot came, attendees fled. He was taken inside a university building and later emerged to find “literally hundreds of emergency vehicles” and a SWAT team on the grounds. A video posted by Hicken showed an older man being detained, but a university spokesperson later said he was not a suspect.
