Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk, sat feet from Kirk's widow in a Provo, Utah, courtroom Monday as prosecutors began laying out the evidence.
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It was the first time Kirk's family had been in the same room as Robinson since the Turning Point USA founder was gunned down on September 10 at Utah Valley University. Erika Kirk and Charlie's parents sat through the opening of the five-day preliminary hearing, joined by Donald Trump Jr and other friends of Charlie, including Jack Posobiec. When the state's first witness began describing the shooting, the family walked out. They later returned.
Robinson appeared with his wrists shackled to a chain at his waist. Before the hearing got underway, he was reportedly seen laughing during a conversation with his attorneys. It echoed his first in-person appearance in December, when courtroom video showed him smiling and laughing with his legal team and smiling toward relatives seated in the gallery.
The prosecution's first witness, former Utah Valley University police officer Chris Bagley, testified that Kirk was answering a student's question when a shot rang out at 12:23 p.m. Bagley said he ran to the roof of a nearby building with a clear line of sight to the stage, where he found a disturbance in the gravel he described as a "sniper pad", with markings suggesting someone had been lying prone in a firing position. Nearby, he spotted a red-and-black screwdriver, and when he reached the spot where the suspect had been detained, he found an empty pistol holster in the grass.
The second witness, former Utah State Bureau of Investigation agent David Hull, walked the court through the manhunt, which he said began as "organized chaos" as officers tried to determine whether an active shooter was still at large. Investigators sifted through a flood of public tips and hundreds of hours of surveillance footage, Hull said, and used campus cameras to track Robinson's vehicle, which they say visited Utah Valley University roughly four times the day of the shooting: before it, during it, and hours after. He testified that a Utah resident's doorbell camera captured Robinson and his car across two days, September 10 and 11. Robinson turned himself in to the authorities in Washington County the day after the killing.
Prosecutors played several videos of the shooting for Judge Tony Graf, who visibly flinched while watching them, and were barred from showing them on the hearing's livestream after Graf ruled the footage too graphic to publicize. Attorneys on both sides angled their monitors away from the gallery. Hull described what the videos showed: the crowd milling around, Kirk speaking with attendees, the moment he was shot, and his security detail carrying him away while giving first aid.
In an exchange worth noting, Graf declined to admit one video exhibit after the defense argued it had been altered and no witness was available to explain what had been changed.
This article will be updated as new information becomes available
