‘A lot of blood’: Witnesses describe the Charlie Kirk shooting
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People run and crouch after US right-wing activist and commentator Charlie Kirk was shot at a Utah Valley University speaking event.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mark Walter and Anushka Patil
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NEW YORK - Mr Andrew Piskadlo was standing in the middle of a campus amphitheatre on Sept 10, waiting to debate with Mr Charlie Kirk about the Eighth Amendment, when a single shot rang out
“It was surprising, and no one really got down until the people in front of the stage did,” Mr Piskadlo, 28, of Salt Lake City, said in a phone interview. “People got down in waves.”
He had been in line at a campus event at Utah Valley University, waiting to speak to and debate with Mr Kirk, as students typically do in the so-called Prove Me Wrong debates that Mr Kirk, a right-wing activist, hosted.
Mr Piskadlo, who estimated that he was about 24m away, recalled that Mr Kirk had been responding to a question about transgender mass shooting suspects at some point before he was shot.
When the shot rang out, he said he dropped first but did not run.
He said he did not see Mr Kirk get shot. He estimated that the shooting occurred just minutes after the programme began, shortly after noon.
Mr Brandon Russon, a 24-year-old student at Ensign College in Salt Lake City, said he was near the front row of the crowd, about 6m from Mr Kirk.
“I just saw Charlie kind of slump backwards, and I saw – it was very graphic – I saw a lot of blood. And then everybody around me just fell to the ground trying to take cover,” Mr Russon said.
He described a split second of confusion: Mr Kirk was being asked about mass shootings at the time, and for a brief moment, Mr Russon wondered whether the shooting was part of an act.
“That lasted only about a second before I realised it was something very serious going on,” he said.
Fearing that more shots could be fired, Mr Russon said he stayed crouched on the ground for about a minute as people screamed and ran around him.
A police officer stands in front of a tent after US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Orem, Utah, on Sept 10.
PHOTO: REUTERS
He said he texted his wife to tell her what was happening and that he loved her, then grabbed his friend, who was next to him, and ran for a nearby building.
Mr Russon said he was still shaken up by the event and felt grateful to be alive.
He recalled that before it started, he had turned to his friend and said the courtyard venue was not ideal for someone who was a “divisive public figure”.
Mr Piskadlo said the set-up of the amphitheatre struck him as unsafe before the event.
Despite a heavy security presence, he noticed “there were a lot of ledges, points where this could happen”.
“This seemed really preventable. I’m kind of angry at the organisers.”
Mr Isaac Davis, a junior at Utah Valley University, said the shot fired “wasn’t that loud”.
He added: “It was definitely noticeable, but it sounded almost like a firecracker.”
He said he believed the shooter was not in the crowd.
Mr Davis said the scene devolved into “hysteria” after the shot, and he and several others were pushed indoors and into a classroom to hide.
“I just didn’t want to be in the building while everything was going on, so I ran out of it,” he said. NYTIMES
Benjamin Wood contributed reporting from the campus of Utah Valley University.
