SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Yesterday, Utah officials announced the arrest of the man they believe fired the shot that killed Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University. Of course, there's still questions about the why. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering the investigation and joins us in our studios. Ryan, thanks for being with us.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Let us begin with the suspect. What's known about him?
LUCAS: His name is Tyler Robinson. He's 22 years old. He's from Washington, Utah, which is down in the southwestern corner of the state. A colleague of ours, David Condos, who's a reporter with KUER, NPR's member station in Utah, talked to some of the Robinson family's neighbors in Washington. One of them is Kristen Schwerman. She said that she wanted authorities to find the gunman, but this isn't who she wanted it to be. She also said this about Robinson.
KRISTEN SCHWERMAN: He was a smart kid, quiet. You know, I used to see him out doing yard work all the time when he was younger. He had a full-ride scholarship, I guess.
LUCAS: Schwerman worked at the local elementary school. She said Robinson and his brothers went there as kids and that their family's a normal, hardworking family. They go to the same church in town, for example. She also said this about learning that he was a suspected gunman.
SCHWERMAN: It was a shock that it was him, but I so feel sorry for his mother and his dad because that's not how they raised him.
SIMON: And what led investigators to Tyler Robinson?
LUCAS: Utah's Republican governor, Spencer Cox, talked about how this all went down. Here's a bit of what he said.
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SPENCER COX: On the evening of September 11, a family member of Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted the Washington County Sheriff's Office with information that Robinson had confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident.
LUCAS: Now, that information was passed along to state and federal authorities. And FBI Director Kash Patel said Robinson was arrested around 10 p.m. local time on Thursday night. Now, investigators also dug into social media. They interviewed Robinson's family, and Cox said that one family member told investigators that Robinson had become more political in recent years. Cox also said that the family member recounted a recent dinner that Robinson was at and that Robinson had mentioned that Kirk was going to be speaking at Utah Valley University, which, of course, is where Kirk was killed. Cox also said that in that dinner conversation, Robinson and a family member talked about why they didn't like Kirk and the viewpoints that he espoused.
SIMON: Any indication about motive yet?
LUCAS: Well, look, that's always the huge question mark hanging over a shooting like this. Neither Cox nor Patel directly addressed that question - the question of motive. But they did offer clues that could point to that issue, one being the conversation about Kirk that I just mentioned. But Cox also said that investigators found writing etched onto the shell casings that they found in the gun that they believe was used in the shooting. The writing on one unfired casing, read, hey, fascist, catch, along with some arrow symbols. Another read oh, bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao, which could be a reference to an old Italian anti-fascist song or could be an online gaming reference.
As our colleague Odette Yousef has reported, analysts in internet extremism are cautious about reading too much into these very limited hints about Robinson's views. They say that even though some of the engravings, on their face, may signal anti-fascist views, some of the slogans have been used by specific far-right groups to troll others that they consider to be more mainstream conservative, all of which is to say it's too soon to answer the motive of question or political angle.
SIMON: What are you looking for next?
LUCAS: Well, obviously, the motive question is really the big one hanging over all of this. Investigators are going to be going through Robinson's phones, his internet search history, his social media, interviewing more people who knew him to try to get a sense of that, and it's going to take time. And since Robinson is now a defendant in this case, that information is going to come out in court papers as authorities pursue the prosecution against him.
SIMON: Ryan Lucas, thanks so much.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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