Tyler Robinson: What’s known about Charlie Kirk shooting suspect’s politics, bullet casing etchings

As soon as officials announced the name of the alleged assassin of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, internet theories about the suspect’s background and motives quickly outpaced confirmed facts.

Authorities said Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident, shot and killed Kirk Sept. 10 on the Utah Valley University campus. Kirk was close to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Officials took Robinson into custody in the evening of Sept. 11. Announcing the arrest Sept. 12, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox shared four phrases etched on bullet casings found with a gun investigators believe was Robinson’s.

When the news became public, Americans began searching for information on Robinson and sharing theories about him and his family. Much of that information, especially in the early hours after the news broke, was inaccurate. Some online users chased wrong leads and implicated innocent people in the process. 

Here is some confirmed information about what’s true and what’s not in Robinson’s background, as of Sept. 12.

Suspect is not the person who donated to Trump

One X post^[1] identified a $225 donation to Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign from a Tyler Robinson in St. George, Utah. But that’s a different Tyler Robinson than the suspect, according to records.

Federal Election Commission records^[2] show that a person with that name in St. George contributed $224.48 on Oct. 5, 2020, to Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee. The donor listed their occupation as an entrepreneur, and other records show a person with that name and zip code is 32 years old.

As of the date of the donation, the Robinson who is the suspect would have been 17 years old. People who are 17 can legally donate^[3] to candidates under certain conditions, but we did not find donations in federal records from the suspect.

Robinson was an unaffiliated, inactive voter

An X post^[4] said Robinson was a registered Republican in Utah, “according to state records.”

That’s not what records show. The website voterrecords.com^[5] — which draws from public government records — shows a person with identifying information that matches the suspect reflects he was an unaffiliated, inactive voter.

We contacted the Washington County, Utah, elections department to ask questions about his voter registration and did not hear back.

An inactive voter^[6] is a registered voter who has not voted in two regular general elections and has failed to respond to a notice sent by the county clerk.

Inactive voters must verify or update their address before receiving a ballot. Ballots are mailed^[7] only to active voters.

About 27% of active registered voters in Utah are unaffiliated^[8], and about half are Republican. 

This photo released by the Utah Governor’s Office Sept. 12, 2025 shows Tyler Robinson. (Utah Governor’s Office via AP)

No evidence that Robinson is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America

Social media users said Robinson was a member of the Salt Lake City Democratic Socialists of America. The organization said he is not a member of any of its chapters, and the photos and videos users have pointed to as evidence of his affiliation do not show Robinson. 

Priscilla Yeverino, a national spokesperson for the organization, said the group has no members named Tyler Robinson “anywhere in the country.” Yeverino said the organization has received several photos of people alleging they are Robinson, “which is vehemently false.”

Users shared a video^[9] they allege showed Robinson speaking at an event for the Salt Lake City chapter days before the shooting. The full video^[10] from Sept. 6 shows the speaker is chapter co-chair Matty Jackson.

Other users have shared a photo^[11] of a man they allege is Robinson wearing a red t-shirt with a bee that says “Salt Lake DSA.” Before Robinson was confirmed as the suspect, some users on social media shared the same photo^[12] identifying the man as Jack Bellows. Bellows describes himself^[13] as a community organizer and is running for Salt Lake City Council. A screenshot from an Instagram live video^[14] of Bellows has also been shared on social media^[15] posts identifying him as Robinson.

Internet finds meanings for mysterious etchings on bullet casings

Before Robinson’s arrest, online posters and eventually the Wall Street Journal^[16] had reported on an internal, unreleased FBI memo that said etched phrases on bullet casings could have expressed his support for transgender rights. But law enforcement officials later walked that interpretation back, as did the newspaper. 

At the press conference, Cox announced^[17] the specific texts etched on four bullet casings found with^[18] a Mauser Model 98 .30-06 caliber bolt action rifle:

• “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this?”

• “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao”

• “Hey fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow symbol, a right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols

• “If you read this, you are gay LMAO”

The phrases unleashed speculation about their meaning. Some users familiar with video game culture zeroed in on potential sources, with many of them couched in layers of irony and sarcasm.

According to the website “Know Your Meme^[19],” the phrase “Notices bulges, OwO what’s this?” has been circulating online since at least 2013, particularly to parody online role-playing subcultures, including “furries^[20],” a community that dresses up as anthropomorphized animal characters.

On the surface, the phrase “Hey fascist! Catch!” seems to indicate that the person who fired the weapon was someone on the political left opposed to fascism. However, X users said^[21] the phrase and the arrow sequence comes^[22] from the game Helldivers 2^[23], which envisions battles involving^[24] fascist-uniformed fighters. A move in that game that involves pressing a series of arrows allows players to drop^[25] a 1,100-pound bomb — the game’s most destructive weapon.

“Bella Ciao” is an Italian song with antifascist roots^[26] from World War II that have made it a popular resistance song in various international contexts. Commentators, including journalists,^[27] also said^[28] it has been used in the World War II-themed video game “Hearts of Iron IV^[29]” and has sometimes been adopted^[30], in an ironic way, by far-right groups.

“These reported messages seem to be sending strong ‘subcultural batsignals,’” said Whitney Phillips, a University of Oregon assistant professor of information politics and ethics who has researched shooters with ties to internet meme culture.

Phillips said she first used that term in a 2015 book on internet trolling “to describe the winking self-referentiality you often see in trolling and trolling-adjacent communities, and which have appeared in many shooter manifestos in the last 10 years,” including a 2019 mass shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand^[31].

But Phillips added that phrases like the ones on the bullet casings go further, by seeking to provoke the public.

“These don’t seem to be messages intended to be, essentially, private sigils — an expression of private rage from the shooter to Charlie Kirk,” Phillips said. “There seems to be a further aim of maximum publicity, specifically publicity aimed to arouse the strongest possible responses in as many audiences as possible.”

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.