Utah Gov. Spencer Cox issued a stern warning to the gunman who took the life of political activist Charlie Kirk Wednesday afternoon.
“We will find you, we will try you, and we will hold you accountable to the furthest extend of the law,” Cox said at a press conference following Kirk’s death.
Cox also referred to Kirk’s death as a “political assassination.”
Kirk, 31, was shot and at an event at Utah Valley University.
“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation. I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination,” Cox said.
“Charlie Kirk was first and foremost a husband and a dad to two young children. He was also very much politically involved and that’s why he was here on campus,” Cox said. “Charlie believed in the power of free speech and debate to shape ideas and to persuade people.”
Cox spoke about university campuses being placed “where truth and ideas are formulated and debated.”
“He comes on college campuses and he debates. That is foundational to the formation of our country, to our most basic constitutional rights, and when someone takes the life of a person because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened.”
“The investigation is ongoing, but I want to make it crystal clear right now to whoever did this: we will find you, we will try you, wnd we will hold you accountable to the furthest extent of the law,” Cox added.
“And I just want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here in the state of Utah. Our nation is broken. We’ve had political assassinations recently in Minnesota. We had an attempted assassination on the governor of Pennsylvania and we had an attempted assassination on a presidential candidate and former president of the United States and now current president of the united States. Nothing I say can unite us as a country. Nothing I can say right now can fix what is broken. Nothing I can say can bring back Charlie Kirk. Our hearts are broken. We mourn with his wife, his children, his family, his friends. We mourn as a nation.”
He also directed comments to those who may be celebrating what happened.
“If anyone in the sound of my voice celebrated even a little bit at the news of this shooting, I would beg you to look in the mirror and to see if you can find a better angel in there somewhere,” Cox said. “I don’t care what his politics are. I care that he was an American.”
