Security experts question the evaluation of the threat while hunting for the federal man continues for the suspect

Security experts question the adequacy of the evaluation of the threats carried out before Charlie Kirk Event scheduled at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, where the conservative activist was assassinated in front of thousands of participants. Control comes as the federal authorities end a manhunt for the suspect linked to the attack.

“Universities Have so many speakers who come to campus all the time. They rarely plan that someone will take a longer term shot with a rifle, “said Lieutenant-Colonel retired from Marine Hal Kempfer in an interview with Fox News Digital.

What Kirk’s assassination means for Trump’s safety

“The assassinations of elite shooters are much less common and even in the active shooting scenarios, generally the active shooter enters a closed space where the person is very close to the place where the victims are located,” he said, noting the immense difficulty of defending against an aggressor who can strike a concealed, raised or distant position.

“It is much more involved to carry out and plan counter-sniper missions,” said Kempfer, stressing that this level of violence has never been planned in what was to be a discussion of debate style.

An FBI agent looks at himself near the University of Utah Valley where evidence was collected while the authorities were investigating the shooting of political activist Charlie Kirk on September 11, 2025 in Orem, Utah. (Michael Ciaglo / Getty Images)

The revelation highlights an unprecedented challenge in the face of the police while working to protect political rallies on university campuses and in the country’s communities.

“The campus has limited security. They have no unlimited budget for this. They had six officers there, which, for any security force of the university campus, is not a number of insignificant officers. But they also had 3,000 people at this event,” said Kempfer.

Complete coverage of Charlie Kirk

Wednesday’s event, the first of what was to be a series USA Turning Point “American Comeback Tour” was nothing out of the ordinary. Kirk, the charismatic founder of the group of young conservative activists in the country, was recognized for its signature political debates on university campuses.

In addition to local security, Kirk, who spoke outside, was flanked about his personal security details.

Charlie Kirk speaks before he was shot down during the visit to Turning Point at the University of Utah Valley in Orem, Utah, Wednesday, September 10, 2025. (Tess Crowley / The Deseret News via AP)

Despite these measures, the former FBI special agent Stuart Kaplan said that the shooter may have established his position on the roof in advance, which made it difficult to locate him.

“He was clearly not detected, nothing indicates that someone saw him on this roof,” Kaplan told Fox News on an interview on Wednesday. “It was a very well planned and very well orchestrated plot that was set in motion a few days before,” he said, adding that the suspect “had a certain level of sophistication for having exactly developed how it was going to go.”

This evaluation was reproduced by the former senator from New York State and internal security advisor Michael Balboni, who said: “A shot reached the target at 200 meters and then escaping without anyone having seen them – these are the characteristics of a professional”.

An infographic showing several points of interest following the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. (Kadri Suat Celik / Anadolu / Getty Images)

“The most difficult thing to do is to anticipate where the threat comes from and what threats there is. I would say that in an outdoor setting like this, a rifle attack is probably the most difficult thing to stop,” added Balboni in an interview on Fox News 5.

Kaplan said that armed men had also thought about how to escape the police after taking the fatal shot.

What is a bolts’ rifle? What we know about the weapon used to kill Charlie Kirk

Kempfer noted that the weapon recovered by the authorities on Thursday was a lock rifle, a common hunting weapon evaluated for its sustainability and its reliability. Unlike semi-automatic weapons, he explained, a bolt rifle often keeps the worn cartridge in the room rather than ejecting it, leaving no shell case-or “brass”-so that investigators can collect.

“This is only one of those things where you, if you have thought about it, you know that you cannot leave any forensic evidence so that the investigators can work,” he said.

On Friday, at a press conference on Friday, the authorities announced that they had Tyler Robinson in detention after being transformed into police forces by his own family. Robinson was identified following a series of videos and photos published by the FBI.

The FBI published two photos Thursday of a new person of interest in the murder of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. (FBI Salt Lake City)

In a photo published Thursday, individual authorities were looking for a hat, sunglasses and an American flag t-shirt with an eagle on it.

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