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Topics: Charlie Kirk, US News, Crime, Politics
Joe Harker
Topics: Charlie Kirk, US News, Crime, Politics
A security expert has spoken on some of the mistakes made in an incident where American conservative speaker Charlie Kirk was shot dead at the age of 31.
Kirk was at an event held at Utah Valley University yesterday (10 September) when a single gunshot rang out and crowds started ducking for cover.
The 31-year-old appeared to be struck in the neck by the shot, and he was taken to a car, which drove him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Six police officers were working as security at the event along with Kirk's own private security detail for the event, which drew a crowd of over 3,000 people.
UVU police chief Jeff Long said there were also some plainclothes police officers in the crowd, and lamented Kirk's death as a 'tragic incident'.
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He said: "We train for these things, and you think you have things covered, and these things, unfortunately, they happen. You try to get your bases covered, and unfortunately, today we didn't. Because of that, we had this tragic incident."
The Utah Department of Public Safety say they believe the shooting was a 'targeted attack' and that the fatal shot was fired from a nearby roof.
Two people were arrested in the aftermath but later released, and the search for the shooter is ongoing, as the Department of Public Safety said the ‘shooting is still an active investigation’.
Security expert Will Geddes told LADbible the security at the event was 'not sufficient' and he feels sorry for the security team as 'this will haunt them for the rest of their lives'.
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Geddes said he was not going to blame the security detail despite saying their skills 'were not sufficient in my estimation', adding that at this moment he was 'blaming whoever trusted them to be able to scope this appropriately'.
The expert explained that in planning for an event like this, 'you risk assess for everything' and he would have put himself in the spot Kirk was going to be to look for places an attack might come from.
He said it was vital to 'see who could get a direct line of sight to you, and then close off those problems'. Geddes continued to say that he was first concerned when he saw the 31-year-old had been 'sat underneath this sort of fabric cabana' which offered no obstruction to a bullet.
He said: "What I would be doing is putting myself exactly in the place, this is in advance of the event, I'd be putting myself in the place of where the principal will be standing or sitting. So I can then aspect in front of me and to my sides and to my rear, where a threat potentially has a direct line of sight to me.
"So if there's a threat of a potential shooting how easy would that be able to be done? Would it be from someone in the immediate front row, or the mid rows, or the rear rows? Or would it be someone who's aspected from a roof?"
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He compared the situation to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last year and said there ought to have been more done to restrict access to the roofs, which offered a line of sight to Kirk's location, and since the 31-year-old was sitting down, 'that made him the proverbial sitting duck'.
Geddes said that bearing the Trump assassination attempt in mind, he'd have wanted the roofs closed off and had some security up there to stop a person getting a clear line of sight to their target.
Other security experts have said they advised Kirk to use ballistic glass in case someone attempted to take a shot at him. Meanwhile, witnesses told NBC that they found the security at the event to be lacking, as while the event was meant to be ticketed, he didn't need one to get in.
Tyler McGettigan said 'literally, anyone could walk in if they wanted'.
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The roof of the university's Losee Center building has been identified as the most likely point for the shooter to have been positioned, and footage on social media claims to have spotted a figure on the roof in the moments before Kirk was shot dead.
Other footage appeared to show someone running from the roof in the immediate aftermath of the gunshot, and Geddes said he'd 'put a 90 per cent on that's the shooter'.
The security expert said there were some 'serious questions' to be asked about how someone could get up there, particularly given the 'physical security' which should be in place to stop just anyone from climbing up there.
"A couple of quick questions from a security facility side of physical security side. How could he gain access to the roof?" Geddes asked. “Many buildings will have access control systems, electronic access control systems. So the first thing I'll be looking at is looking at the logs on that access control to see who used a pass to gain access to the roof."
If there are such systems in place that raise the question of how the shooter gained the means to access the roof, and whether someone should have noticed that somebody got their hands on a pass or a key.
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How the shooter reached the roof, the means they used to get on there, and how they acquired those means will all be part of the police investigation if Kirk was shot from that location.
Geddes said the shooter would have 'no doubt rehearsed and recced their location before the actual day and the event itself', including a possible escape plan.
He suspected that the shooter would have been thinking: "So what are my options for escaping? Is it across onto another roof? Is it down? Down another stairwell, is it through a fire escape?
"You know, what are the options? Or do I hide until everything passes.
"One would hope the police would immediately descend it onto the building and close off all the exit points or egress points, and then started securing the building to see whether he was still in there or she was still in there."