She had attended Charlie Kirk events before, most recently a few weeks ago in Tampa, Florida. When she heard the conservative activist was speaking at her university, she immediately decided to attend.
Hunter Kozak, 29, a Democratic activist and math and philosophy major, stood in line with his wife for a spot on the lawn at Utah Valley University in Orem, where they were about an hour and a half before the debate with Kirk began. Security let him up to the fences after asking him what question he wanted to ask the university guest.
"And it couldn't have been a worse question," Kozak told the New York Times. When Kirk was murdered, the two were discussing mass shootings in the United States. Kozak had considered asking him about Epstein or gender issues, but then decided to ask him about gun massacres because his brother had been involved in a shooting in the past.
When the shot was fired,"I thought it was a firecracker," Kozak explains. But it took him a few split seconds to realize what had really happened:"I saw the blood, I threw myself on the ground and tried to get away from the stage," he told the Washington Post."I thought, 'This is murder, Charlie was the target, and he's dead.'" "I wasn't afraid for my life. It's just that what I saw in front of me was so visceral," he added, describing his face-to-face encounter with Kirk before the shot.
Kozak returned home with his two children, the second born last Sunday. He didn't respond to the numerous messages sent to him by family, friends, and followers (he has 34,000 on TikTok), for fear of exposing himself. But after 24 hours, he spoke out on social media:"As much as I disagreed with Kirk on everything, there was one thing that united us: the desire to confront those who don't think like me, to have free debate." He then reflected on the fact that he, like Kirk, has a family, on the fact that they are contemporaries:"He was a father, like me. A human being. What happened is intolerable."
Kozak's wife was recording the exchange with Kirk and handed the videos over to police. Meanwhile, many on social media pointed the finger at Kozak, with some right-wing accounts pointing to him as a possible culprit behind the attack. The real culprit, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, has already been arrested by police.
