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Before he was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the assassination, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson sent friends messages showing that he was closely following news about the killing.
Sept. 13, 2025, 8:20 p.m. ET
The day after Charlie Kirk was killed, an acquaintance of Tyler Robinson’s posed a question to him in a group chat.
The F.B.I. had just released two grainy surveillance images of a skinny young man in a cap and sunglasses walking in a stairwell on the Utah Valley University campus, and had asked for the public’s help in identifying the suspect.
Tagging Mr. Robinson’s username on Discord, a messaging platform, the acquaintance attached the images and wrote “wya” — where you at? — with a skull emoji, suggesting that Mr. Robinson, 22, looked like the man being sought.
Mr. Robinson replied within a minute. His “doppelganger,” he wrote, was trying to “get me in trouble.”
“Tyler killed Charlie!!!!” another user wrote, apparently in jest.
That was on Thursday afternoon, around 1 p.m. local time. It was not until later that night, nearly 34 hours after the shooting, that Mr. Robinson was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the assassination of Mr. Kirk, 31, a conservative pundit whose killing has inflamed the political world.
The Discord messages were the clearest glimpse yet of the suspect’s demeanor in the hours after the killing. They were shared with The New York Times by someone who knew Mr. Robinson in high school and has kept up with him in the group chat — which includes about 20 people — but said he had not seen Mr. Robinson in person for several years. He spoke on the condition that his name not be used, fearing harassment for being an acquaintance of the suspect.
