Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, a shocking act of political violence that brought widespread condemnation.

Hours later, authorities said they had captured a person of interest in the shooting. But the person was released without any charges, and the manhunt continues.

The gunman is believed to have killed Kirk from at least 200 feet away using some type of sniper rifle, law enforcement sources told The Times. The name of the person in custody was not released, and officials have not announced a possible motive.

Videos shared on social media show Kirk sitting under a white canopy, speaking to hundreds of people through a microphone, when a loud pop is heard; he suddenly falls back, blood gushing from his neck.

Before he was shot, he was asked about mass shootings.

“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” an audience member asks.

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responds.

Almost immediately, Kirk is shot in the neck. One video shows blood pouring from the wound. As the crowd realizes what has taken place, people are heard screaming and running away.

A source familiar with the investigation told the Los Angeles Times that a bullet struck Kirk’s carotid artery.

The killing was captured on video in graphic detail from several angles. The footage was widely shared across the internet. Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, said authorities were analyzing campus security video that showed a suspect in dark clothing who may have shot at Kirk from a roof.

The shooting comes a year after a would-be assassin wounded President Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and amid an era of increasing political divisions.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, called Wednesday’s attack a political assassination and warned that authorities would find the person responsible and prosecute them to the fullest extend of the law.

“I just want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here,” Cox said at a news conference.

He decried recent acts of political violence — including the attempted assassination attempts on Trump and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro— and called on Americans to come together to repair a broken country.

“We desperately need our country,” he said. “We desperately need leaders in our country, but more than the leaders, we just need every single person in this country to think about where we are and where we want to be and to ask ourselves — is this it?”

Kirk, a conservative political activist, was in Utah for his American Comeback Tour, which was holding its first stop at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Long, chief of the university’s police department, said that six of the force’s officers, including some plainclothes officers, were working with members of Kirk’s personal security team to manage safety at the public outdoor event, which drew a crowd of more than 3,000 people.

“You try to get your bases covered,” said Long at a news conference. “And unfortunately today we didn’t, and because of that we have this tragic incident.”

Shortly after the shooting, police took an initial suspect, George Zinn, into custody. However, Zinn did not match the identity of the shooting suspect, said Mason. He was later released after being booked by Utah Valley University police on suspicion of obstruction of justice.

At a 3 p.m. news conference, Cox said that authorities were interviewing a different person of interest who had been detained. At 5 p.m., FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the person was released after an interrogation by law enforcement.

At this time, authorities believe only one person was involved in the attack, Cox said.

The tour, as with many of Kirk’s events, had drawn both supporters and protesters. Kirk’s wife and children were at the university when he was shot, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin posted on X.

Kirk, 31, was one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers.

The founder of the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Kirk had a vast online reach: 1.6 million followers on Rumble, 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 5.2 million followers on X and 7.3 million followers on TikTok.

During the 2024 election, he rallied his online followers to support Trump, prompting conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly to say: “It’s not an understatement to say that this man is responsible for helping the Republicans win back the White House and the U.S. Senate.”

Just after Trump was elected for a second time to the presidency in November, Kirk frequently posted to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he had firsthand influence over which MAGA loyalists Trump named to his Cabinet.

Kirk was known for melding his conservative politics, nationalism and evangelical faith, casting the current political climate as a state of spiritual warfare between a righteous right wing and so-called “godless” liberals.

At a Turning Point event on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church in 2023, he said that gun violence was worth the price of upholding the right to bear arms.

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

He also previously declared that God was on the side of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” In a speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last year, he said that “the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle happening all around us.”

Kirk was also known for his memes and college campus speaking tours meant to “own the libs.” Videos of his debates with liberal college students have racked up tens of millions of views.

The shooting drew immediate words of support and calls for prayers for Kirk from America’s leading conservative politicians.

“Say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X.

Leading Democrats also moved swiftly to condemn the attack.

“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on X. “In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”

Gabrielle Giffords, a former Arizona congresswoman who survived a political assassination attempt in 2011 and is a gun violence prevention advocate, said on X that she was horrified to hear that Kirk was shot.

“Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence,” she wrote.

Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, has written a forthcoming book about Christian nationalism that prominently features Kirk and his influence. The book, “The Seven Mountains Mandate,” comes out Sept. 30.

“Today is a tragedy,” Boedy said in an interview with The Times on Wednesday. “It is a red flag for our nation.”

Boedy said the shooting — following the two assassination attempts against Trump on the campaign trail last year — was a tragic reminder of “just how divisive we have become.”

In June, a man posing as a police officer fatally shot Minnesota state House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home in an incident that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called “a politically motivated assassination.”

Another Democratic lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were also injured at their residence less than 10 miles away.

In April, a shooter set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, forcing Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family to flee during the Jewish holiday of Passover.

In July 2024, Trump himself survived a hail of bullets, one of which grazed his ear, at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. Two months later, a man with a rifle was arrested by Secret Service agents after he was spotted amid shrubs near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort.

Kirk’s presence at the Utah campus was preceded by petitions and protests. But, Boedy noted, that was typical with his appearances.

“Charlie Kirk is, I would say, the most influential person who doesn’t work in the White House,” he said.

Kirk reached a vast array of demographics, Boedy said, through his radio show and social media accounts and was “in conversation with President Trump a lot.”

He had said his melding in recent years of faith and politics was influenced by Rob McCoy, the pastor of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Newbury Park in Ventura County. Kirk called McCoy, who often spoke at his events, his personal pastor.

Boedy said McCoy turned Kirk toward Christian nationalism, specifically the Seven Mountains Mandate — the idea that Christians should try to influence the seven pillars of cultural influence: arts and religion, business, education, family, government, media and religion.

Kirk “turned Turning Point USA into an arm of Christian nationalism,” Boedy said. “There’s a strategy called the Seven Mountains Mandate, and he has put his TPUSA money into each of those.”

Kirk was a vocal Second Amendment supporter, and Boedy said that the shooting likely would further the desire among his conservative followers who tout the idea of having good guys with guns “to have more guns everywhere, which is sad.”

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(Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.)

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