The Utah Valley University student who exchanged words with Charlie Kirk just seconds before the conservative activist was shot and killed has broken his silence.
Hunter Kozak called the assassination ‘a tragedy’ and urged those celebrating Kirk’s death to ‘stay peaceful.’
‘It’s hard to grapple with,’ said Kozak in an emotional Instagram video posted on Thursday.
Kirk was speaking at a debate on Wednesday at Utah Valley University when authorities said a sniper fired from a distant rooftop.
Kozak, a mathematics student at UVU, was the final audience member to speak during the Q&A portion of Kirk’s campus event when the Turning Point USA founder was fatally shot.
Kozak had challenged Kirk on his claims linking transgender people to mass shootings, sparking a brief but pointed exchange. Kirk was speaking into a handheld microphone before he was fatally wounded.
While some progressive voices appear to celebrate the killing, Kozak is urging restraint and mourning what he says was a devastating act of violence.
‘As much as I disagree with Charlie Kirk, I’m on the record for how much I disagree with Charlie Kirk,’ he said. ‘But like… man, dude, he is still a human being. Have we forgotten that?’
Hunter Kozak is the Utah Valley University student who exchanged words with Charlie Kirk just seconds before the conservative activist was shot and killed
Kozak, a mathematics student at UVU, was the final audience member to speak during the Q&A portion of Kirk’s campus event when the Turning Point USA founder was fatally shot
Videos show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent
Kozak appeared emotional in the three-and-a-half minute long video message. His composure stood in sharp contrast to those who viewed Kirk’s death as political retribution.
‘First off, you sick f***ing psychos that think this is the answer. It’s not,’ Kozak said in the video. ‘It’s f***ing not. It’s awful. And a father doesn’t have his kids anymore.’
Kozak made clear that he although he disagreed with Kirk on nearly everything, the murder of a man should not be grounds for celebration.
Kozak’s appearance at the event was no coincidence.
He had recently posted a video criticizing Kirk for falsely suggesting that the suspected Minneapolis school shooter was transgender – part of what Kozak called a pattern of ‘surprisingly and extremely non-violent’ trans people being wrongly demonized in conservative media narratives.
‘Charlie’s counting on the fact that only a psycho would…parse through all of the 6,000 mass shootings that have ever happened in the history of America,’ Kozak said in the earlier clip, which he included in his Thursday post.
When he learned Kirk would be visiting UVU, where he’s currently studying, Kozak decided to attend and challenge him directly.
Charlie Kirk hands out hats before speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah on Wednesday
Kozak said the entire point of his confrontation had been to engage peacefully and he lamented how the discourse had now been overshadowed by violence
The moment between that pair was tense but civil.
‘I asked, you know, how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters in the last 10 years?’ Kozak recalled.
‘Too many,’ Kirk replied.
‘The number’s five,’ Kozak said.
‘Counting or not counting gang violence?’ Kirk shot back.
But it was then the conversation was cut short as a single gunshot rang out hitting Kirk directly.
‘I’m not going to show a video of what happened, mostly because I can barely watch it,’ Kozak said. ‘It’s been a rough 24 hours.’
In the aftermath, Kozak’s role as the last person to speak with Kirk has drawn intense attention but in his video, he steered the focus away from himself and onto the human toll.
‘Not to make this about me, but I have two kids and a wife,’ Kozak said. ‘And if… if my one-year-old boy – like, his one-year-old boy will grow up without memories of his dad.’
The conversation was cut short as a single gunshot rang out hitting Kirk directly in the neck
The FBI on Thursday said it was looking for a ‘person of interest’ in connection with Kirk’s shooting
Though he stood by his opposition to Kirk’s views, Kozak said the entire point of his confrontation had been to engage peacefully and he lamented how the discourse had now been overshadowed by violence.
‘The point that I was trying to make is how peaceful,’ he said. ‘One of the things that [Kirk] stood by was conversation.
‘It’s a tragedy,’ Kozak repeated. ‘And I’m part of a community that’s struggling to grapple with it right now.’
The FBI on Thursday said it was looking for a ‘person of interest’ in connection with Kirk’s shooting. The agency released two photos showing a person wearing a hat, sunglasses and a long-sleeve black shirt.
So far, investigators believe the shooter jumped from the roof and slipped away in the mayhem after firing the fatal shot.
Authorities said the shooter ‘appears to be of college age’ and ‘blended in’ with the college population.
Law enforcement authorities have received more than 200 tips from the public. State police asked people to continue sending them, adding that ‘no tip is too small.’
