On Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, Sharaden Caldwell went to Utah Valley University’s outdoor amphitheater to get extra credit for her sociology class. What was supposed to be a lively debate ended in just 23 minutes with a gunshot that killed the event’s speaker, 31-year-old Charlie Kirk.
Sharaden, her husband, her brother Dakota, their friend Jake and several others gathered to watch Kirk from the back-left of the amphitheater.
It was a warm September afternoon, and the event began easily enough. The audience of 3,000 welcomed Kirk with enthusiasm, and the first student interaction came and went without a hitch. Then the second student approached the mic and began debating Kirk about mass shootings that involved people who identify as transgender.
“I remember hearing a big boom, and I wasn’t sure what it was,” Sharaden told the Deseret News. “I thought I saw blood on his chest … then I saw his eyes roll back in him, and he tipped over.”
Sharaden’s sociology professor, Charles Levy, was about 15 feet from Kirk’s tent when the shot rang out. As the bang echoed around the amphitheater, Levy saw Kirk “jerk backwards” and “leave his chair.”
When Kirk’s body went limp, the world slowed and his ears began ringing, Dakota said.
Then the bowl filled with screams.
‘It’s a unique feeling to not know ... if your life is going to end’
“We didn’t know if this was a shooter like Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, where they’re up on a roof somewhere and they just start spraying into the crowd,” Dakota said. “It’s a unique feeling to not know if ... your life is going to end at any moment.”
When she saw Kirk slump, Sharaden froze. Her husband and Dakota guarded her, and the three ran out of the amphitheater. On their way out, they passed students who were inconsolably crying and others who were screaming warnings about an active shooter on campus.
Meanwhile, Jake became separated from the group.
“Immediately after the shot, I saw college kids surrounding other people to protect them,” said Jake, who asked the Deseret News not to use his last name. As he walked past, he saw three students “kneeling on the ground in prayer, asking God to save Charlie or save whoever potentially got shot.”
Near the courtyard’s main entrance, Jake found a mother standing still, holding a child. She couldn’t turn around, because she had a stroller in front of her. “Then all of a sudden, three other college kids and I huddled around her, turned her around and got her into the building,” Jake said. “I’m not sure where she went after that.”
“These 20-year-old kids put themselves between a potential shooter and a mother and her children, and I’ll never forget that,” Jake said.
“There were people running in terror, people on the phone calling their families — one of the things I remember is thinking, this is humanity. You can see the humanity, seconds after a shot rang out in front of 3,000 people,” he said.
Once he was out of the immediate vicinity of the amphitheater, Jake started walking west. “Then it hit me,” he said. “I started breaking down. I called my mom. I called my wife. I broke down in tears.”
Jake had been planning on bringing his 1-year-old daughter to the event that day. “I just kept thinking how grateful I was that I didn’t bring her — not because she would remember anything, but I would remember. And I would be living with what could have happened.”
Telling other students what happened
As Sharaden, Dakota and Jake left the campus, Levy went into UVU’s Hall of Flags building. Inside, “everybody was running around, screaming, ‘Active shooter, active shooter,’” Levy said. He tried to help students evacuate or find places to hide.
Then he went back outside and saw police dragging away the first suspect, George Zinn. Law enforcement later determined Zinn was not involved in the killing.
From there, Levy went classroom to classroom in the Clark Building, telling students and professors there had been a shooting, and they needed to evacuate campus.
Levy said he stayed on campus until “cops with guns came walking and screaming at people to get out.”
The shooting overwhelms social media
As soon as Sharaden and her husband got in their car, she started looking for information online. When she got on Instagram, a close-up video of the assassination popped up.
The others had the same experience. When Levy opened X, several videos from different angles appeared in his feed. One in particular “was much worse than what I saw. I thought it was AI or CGI. I thought it was fake,” Levy said.
Videos of the shooting and the madness that followed stayed in their feeds for several weeks.
“I don’t think anyone should have to see that. I think it’s terrible that any child with a phone would be able to look it up and see it,” Jake said.
There were many children in the amphitheater who saw Kirk get shot, but exponentially more have now seen it because of the spread on social media.
Dakota told the Deseret News he wishes people knew “there were people of all ages down to little kids” at the event that day. “None of us are ever going to erase what happened that day out of our minds. ... I would encourage people, no matter their feelings about Kirk, to have some respect for the people who had to witness it.”
Viciousness and conspiracy theories spread online
The same Wednesday afternoon that Kirk was shot and killed, many people posted about it on social media. Though there were many posts that were kind and heartfelt, a loud minority had awful things to say.
On the same day he was shot, some reacted by saying karma was “busy at work.” Others identified specific people with a name followed by the horrific, cryptic post: “next please.” One claimed that God would reject anyone from heaven who prayed for Charlie Kirk.
These users had detached Kirk from his humanity and from his roles as a husband and a father to two small children.
Social media and the assassination’s political nature allowed people “to distance themselves from what happened,” Levy said.
He continued, “If this had been a school shooting ... I think it would have garnered a very different reaction.” Though Kirk was just as human as everyone posting about him, he was highly politicized, so “it didn’t hit them the same,” Levy said.
As the online cruelty began immediately, so too did the conspiracy theories.
Sharaden told the Deseret News she’s seen theories on social media that Kirk is actually still alive, and what people at UVU saw was a hologram.
“I was there. I saw it happen. It wasn’t a hologram,” she said.
Other unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, some spun by political podcaster Candace Owens, claim Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA knew its CEO was going to be shot, and other countries like Israel and Egypt conspired to kill him.
Kirk’s assassination has “become its own reality,” Levy said. What’s being spread about it in the online sphere is “very different than what happened here. It’s become completely political,” he said.
But the conspiracy theories are not without consequence.
“I think theories can minimize the experiences of people who saw it,” Dakota said. “If there are people out there saying he’s not actually dead or somehow he didn’t die, I think that discounts the experiences, trauma and grief people are going through. ... Not that we shouldn’t question anything in this world, but I think that sometimes it can be harmful to the people who were really there and had to witness it.”
Sharaden agreed, saying, “I think a lot of the conspiracy theories take away the severity of the situation.”
Eyewitnesses wish those online would have ‘a little more humanity’
I was also in the amphitheater the day Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. The sound of the gunshot, his body’s response to the bullet, his eyes closing... the image is burned into my retinas, much like what a lightbulb does when you stare at it for too long.
However, the consequences of being there are not limited to replaying the moment in my mind. It was a rude awakening to the reality of violence. Standing in crowds, waiting for the train, or giving a speech, I have found myself thanking God for human morality — that it is abnormal to murder people for speaking their minds.
The reality of Sept. 10 is that an innocent man was targeted, then killed publicly and violently in front of 3,000 people. The crowd, mainly consisting of 18- to 22-year-olds, watched him die, then feared for their own lives.
“I would never wish anybody to witness what we had to witness,” Jake said. “And I would never wish what happened to Charlie on anybody.”
He continued, “Each one of us is scarred now. Each one of us has a pain that we did not ask for. We were there to support, hear conversation, hear disagreement and watch people come together for some sort of common good. And that was taken from us.”
“People, especially people online who are hiding behind a profile will likely never understand what it was like to be there. And I just wish that they had a little more humanity,” Jake said.
Ed note: Jake, Sharaden and Dakota Caldwell, and Charles Levy were interviewed separately and at different times for this story.