The elderly political activist who became the first person detained after claiming he’d shot Charlie Kirk told police he lied in an attempt to let the real killer get away.
George Zinn, a 71-year-old Utah resident, was initially suspected of being the shooter as he was taken into custody moments after Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck at an event at Utah Valley University last week.
Police documents now claim Zinn – who has several prior arrests for trespassing – admitted to causing a distraction to keep law enforcement away from the shooter, now alleged to be 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.
Zinn had repeatedly asked to see his attorney before making the confession.
He was later taken to a hospital to deal with a pre-existing medical condition and made a further disturbing admission, saying he ‘wanted to be a martyr for the person who was shot.’
Zinn was released from the hospital and then taken to the Utah County Jail after being ordered by a judge Monday to be held without bail, according to Utah Political Watch.
He faces second-degree felony obstruction of justice as police believe they had to take resources away from finding the real killer to attend to Zinn.
The activist had been charged with trespassing as recently as August 22.
The elderly political activist who became the first person detained after claiming he’d shot Charlie Kirk told police he lied in an attempt to let the real killer get away
George Zinn, a 71-year-old Utah resident, was initially suspected of being the shooter as he was taken into custody moments after Kirk, 31, was shot in the neck at an event at Utah Valley College last week
The Daily Mail has reached out to Utah County Police for further comment.
Officials clarified that Zinn was not the shooter shortly after authorities reversed a notice that said they had a suspect in custody.
Zinn was seen in footage that swept social media being detained as witnesses hurled abuse at him, with one branding him a ‘monster’ as others yelled: ‘How dare you?’
Separate footage showed Zinn barking back at the crowd to ‘shoot me’, and a cop at the scene was heard saying ‘he said he shot him, but I don’t know’, per the Salt Lake Tribune.
After it became clear that Zinn was not the gunman who killed Kirk, he was identified by Utah residents as a well-known political activist with a number of small-time arrests to his name.
He is known to frequently show up at protests and demonstrations in the state, and Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the Tribune that his office has prosecuted Zinn numerous times dating back to the 1980s.
Many of his arrests were for trespassing, Gill said, as he described Zinn as a libertarian conservative who would ‘give me a hard time for being a Dem’.
The District Attorney said he was aware of Zinn from years of political protests in Utah, as at ‘almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background, listening’.
Charlie Kirk, CEO of conservative education nonprofit Turning Point, speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention
After it became clear that Zinn was not the gunman who killed Kirk, he was identified by Utah residents as a well-known political activist who has a number of small-time arrests to his name
‘He’s a person who can be odd, and has those kinds of odd behavior challenges,’ Gill said, adding that ‘by and large, he’s more of a gadfly than anything else’.
Gill said that his office had tried to get Zinn into mental health court for past misdemeanor charges, but he ‘never really participated in that’.
Zinn’s most serious arrest came in 2013, when he was charged with threatening to plant bombs at the finish line of the Salt Lake City Marathon.
He took a plea deal in the case and initially received a sentence of probation before being ordered to serve a year in jail after violating his probation.
In the officer’s report of the incident, Zinn allegedly ‘stated he didn’t care if the vehicles waited all day’.
‘I told George he needed to wait on the sidewalk, and not in the roadway… He told me he did not care, and to take him to jail.’
Zinn was also arrested in January on suspicion of trespassing after he reportedly tried to get into the Sundance Film Festival, from which he was banned.
The Tribune reported that Zinn was also in attendance at political events including Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s 2023 ‘State of the County’ address, a 2023 Sutherland Institute event headlined by Senator Mike Lee, and former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes’s 2020 announcement that he was running for governor.
‘How dare you, you f***ing monster!’ one witness yelled at Zinn as he was arrested with his pants down
The shooting unfolded Wednesday afternoon at the UVU campus in Orem as Kirk hosted his Turning Point USA event
He was taken into custody in 2019 following a protest in Salt Lake City against the Utah Inland Port Authority, and he was also a courtroom spectator at Kobe Bryant’s sex assault case in Colorado.
And in a bizarre link to the White House, Zinn was said to have slept in a cot in the hotel room of Ronald Reagan’s former education secretary T.H. Bell when he showed up to the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in 1988 without a place to stay.
Robinson, 22, was arrested Friday in connection to the murder that left the conservative activist dead after being shot in the neck at Utah Valley University.
It took 33 hours to arrest Robinson, with police and FBI having detained, then released, two people unconnected to the case.
Investigators then found the alleged murder weapon, a high-powered hunting rifle, in a wooded area near the university and released photos of a young man dressed in a baseball cap and casual clothing.
Late Thursday, officials in Orem released more details about the suspect’s clothing and initial movements after the shooting, pleading with the public to help identify him.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the arrest was finally made at 10pm Thursday. Cox credited assistance from the alleged killer’s family.
On Monday, Patel confirmed that DNA on a towel wrapped around a rifle found near the shooting site matched that of Robinson.
Investigators also have used DNA evidence to link Robinson with a screwdriver recovered from the rooftop where the fatal shot was fired, Patel added.
The FBI director told Fox News that Robinson had written in a note before the shooting that he had an opportunity to take out Kirk and was going to do it.
Investigators were able to recover the note’s contents after it had been destroyed, Patel said, paraphrasing from the note without revealing more details.
Utah has the death penalty for such crimes – a punishment Trump has said he would like imposed.
Authorities said Robinson has not been cooperating with law enforcement.
