Investigators are looking into a note left by Tyler Robinson, the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said overnight.
Social and gaming platform Discord vice president Jud Hoffman said in a statement Friday that there were “communications between the suspect’s roommate and a friend after the shooting where the roommate was recounting the contents of a note the suspect had left elsewhere”.
Cox appeared to confirm the existence of a note in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union, but indicated it was still under review.
“Those are things that are still being processed for accuracy and verification and will be included in charging documents,” Cox said.
Pressed by Bash on whether a note was found and its contents were known by law enforcement, he declined to share specifics.
While police are still investigating the killing, authorities have pointed to what they described as anti-fascist messages engraved on bullet casings in a rifle found near the deadly shooting as potential evidence of a political motive.
One bullet was inscribed with “Hey fascist! Catch!” – a message that Utah Governor Spencer Cox said Friday “speaks for itself.”
A family member of Robinson’s told investigators that the suspected shooter “had become more political in recent years,” and in particular had lashed out at Kirk at a recent family dinner, Cox said.
But the messages on the bullet casings also included a mix of memes and allusions to video games, suggesting a deep immersion in an irony-soaked online world where meanings can be difficult to precisely decipher.
Those messages included a series of arrows representing the controls used to carry out an attack in the video game Helldivers 2 and lyrics of a popular Italian song linked to anti-fascists – but also popularised more recently in another game, Far Cry 6, and a Netflix series.
Several years ago in high school, Robinson – like his family – was politically conservative, and supported President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 election, one of Robinson’s former classmates told CNN.
“When I knew him and his family, they were like diehard Trump,” said the former classmate.
“When this happened, I was like… I don’t know what changed.”
Voter registration records show that Robinson is currently registered to vote unaffiliated with any party, although he never cast a ballot, the Washington County clerk said in a statement.
The former classmate described Robinson as being “very, very big into gaming” and interested in video game design.
Robinson and his friends “would spend their lunches playing the card games and all that kind of stuff,” he said.
