Tyler Robinson confessed to killing Charlie Kirk.
In southern Utah, it’s said there are more churches than traffic lights. Known as “red-rock country”, hulking, ferrous mesas rise from the earth to form a Martian-looking basin, in the middle of which lies the city of Washington.
The settlement of identikit stucco houses dotted with Mormon churches feels in many ways like the edge of the Earth. “There’s nothing to do out here except play golf,” said one taxi driver.
Yet on Friday (local time), this sleepy urban sprawl was transformed into the broadcasting hub of the US, after the FBI revealed that Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin was one of their own.
College dropout Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested on Thursday night, local time, and is expected to be charged with murder.
Robinson’s confession brought to an end a two-day manhunt, after Kirk, an influential conservative activist and key Donald Trump ally, was shot dead on Wednesday, aged 31, while addressing 3000 students at Utah Valley University.
The gunman fired a single lethal shot from 130m before jumping off a roof overlooking the pop-up stage where Kirk was hosting one of his hugely popular Prove Me Wrong sessions, debating students on conservative issues.
Robinson gave himself up after speaking to his father.
The killing has reverberated across the US, sparking furious online debates around freedom of speech and fears of rising left-wing radicalism.
On the middle-class street where Robinson grew up, about 420km south of where Kirk was killed, the once-quiet neighbourhood was abuzz with camera crews. Reporters jostled for quotes from bewildered residents struggling to come to terms with how their peaceful suburb had become the focus of a nationwide manhunt.
“For something of global impact on our nation to happen in your neighbourhood – it’s wild,” said one man.
The scene had become an attraction for a crop of local teenagers, excited to get a picture outside the murder suspect’s house.
A police car stood watch, warding off all who approached. Yet the US$600,000 ($1 million) six-bedroom property itself was unremarkable, save for a back garden overrun with weeds and building equipment.
The only sign of the trauma that lay within was a gleaming nickel Dodge Challenger parked in the driveway – the car the suspect used to make his getaway from the college campus.
The eldest of three brothers, Robinson’s social media shows him smiling with neatly combed hair and wearing a buttoned-up shirt: the picture of an all-American son.
His mother, Amber Robinson, works in healthcare for the disabled, according to her Facebook profile. His father, Matt Robinson, was a long-standing member of the sheriff’s department. Both were registered Republicans, voting records show.
It therefore remains something of a mystery how this young man who aced his high school exams, winning a US$32,000 scholarship to Utah State University, turned into the main suspect in a high-profile murder.
Few answers were provided by neighbours, who painted a picture of a family somewhat isolated from their community.
“They’re private people,” said Gerrett Merrick, 78. The retired postal worker, who shares a back garden fence with the Robinsons, said he’d only seen the boys “three or four times in 10 years”.
The Robinsons, like many in Utah, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with their eldest son becoming a member “at a young age”, church officials confirmed. However, neighbours said they did not attend.
Another local, who lives across from the family, said he had spoken to Robinson’s father, Matthew Robinson, only “three times in the last 20 years” when collecting his mail.
It is equally unclear how a man from a Republican family developed such a visceral hatred for Kirk, a right-wing firebrand.
Clues may lie in his decision to drop out of college after one semester and instead enrol at Dixie Technical College as an electrical apprentice.
A family member told the FBI that he had grown increasingly political in recent years and, at a recent family dinner, had accused Kirk of “spreading hate”.
Yet unbeknown to those around him, Robinson appears to have been radicalised, engraving messages on the weapon he allegedly used to kill Kirk, such as: “Hey fascist! Catch!”
Utah may be a ruby-red state, but politics is not a subject often brought up in the Latter-Day Saints community, neighbours said.
“We have our opinions, we keep our politics to ourselves,” Kristin Schwiermann, who has lived on the Robinsons’ street for 16 years, told USA Today.
Others worried that politics is becoming an insurmountable source of division in the US. Leeta Willoughby, 36, said: “Families have been torn apart by [it]. Seeing everyone arguing all the time on social media, it’s like the nation’s in distress.”
Robinson’s father, encouraged by a church minister, brought an end to the two-day manhunt by convincing his son to turn himself in.
“Tyler, is this you? This looks like you,” he asked his son, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told CNN.
Robinson told his father that he would rather kill himself than turn himself in, but his father was able to persuade him to confide in a youth pastor who works with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.
Melissa Tait, 55, whose children went to the same high school as Robinson, said she was “so thankful” to the family for their actions.
“That had to be an unbelievable decision and I hope all of us parents would do the same,” she said. “I have the utmost sympathy for his family.”
Worse still, when allegations surfaced of their son’s horrific crimes, the Robinsons were already grieving another tragedy.
Easton Robinson, the suspect’s cousin, died just weeks ago in a motorcycle crash, according to locals.
Debbie Robinson, their grandmother, was not home on Friday, local time, but a neighbour said she was having “a hard time with the loss of that grandson”. “She’s probably very emotional right now,” the neighbour added.
A short drive away at the Red Cliffs Temple – the tallest building for miles around – Latter-Day Saints bishops consoled churchgoers devastated by a killing that has frayed the fabric of their community.
“As hard as it probably was for the family, I feel they did the right thing,” said a church brother. “This horrible act that has taken place, it goes against what we teach and what we believe.
“But I pray for him too, actually, and for his family. I do.”
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