Before Charlie Kirk took the stage at Utah Valley University, Turning Point USA officials raised security concerns with UVU Police Chief Jeff Long, according to a notice of claim letter obtained by The Federalist. The rooftops of the tall university buildings overlooking the campus quad where the conservative icon and Turning Point USA co-founder was scheduled to address thousands left him an easy target for a would-be assassin.
A TPUSA official texted, “Hello Chief Long — we received this message today from a student group … ‘there is student roof access pretty close to where [Charlie Kirk] will be set up at Utah Valley (The SorensenStudent center has a couple of stair cases that go up to the walkways on the roof),’” the letter states. The official followed up, telling the chief that “… it would be nice to either have a controlled access or allow one of my guys to be there as well. If possible.”
Long, according to the letter, replied, “I got you covered.”
But the chief and the university failed to properly secure the outdoor venue, alleges the notice of claim, filed by Kirk’s estate and his heirs — his widow, Erika, and the couple’s two young children.
The letter, which preserves the right for the Kirk family to sue, was filed with the Utah Attorney General’s office on Sept. 9 — a day before the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination at the hands of an accused killer who, prosecutors say, fired his gun from one of the adjacent rooftops.
“Through a series of stunning failures and reckless decisions, the UVU Parties created a foreseeable danger to Charlie,” the notice states. “Those decisions ultimately rendered Mr. Kirk helpless to the rooftop shooter in an assassination that could have been avoided had the UVU Parties only taken reasonable steps to plan and oversee a safe event…”
The claim names as “prospective defendants” the state of Utah, the university, the Utah Valley University Police Department, the police chief, former UVU President Astrid Tuminez, and “other state actors known or unknown at this time.”
UVU and its police department, not Turning Point USA, had “the power and authority to block walkways or cordon off a part of campus and limit access, excluding other students and the public to create a safe event,” the claim letter charges.
‘People Want to Murder Us’
Earlier this month, a Utah judge found that 23-year-old Tyler Robinson will stand trial on charges of aggravated murder in the assassination of Kirk, a national leader in the conservative movement and passionate advocate for the First Amendment, particularly on speech-policing college campuses. Robinson, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, faces the death penalty.
Prosecutors say surveillance video shows Robinson rolling onto the railing on top of UVU’s Losee Building after noon local time on Sept. 10, 2025. It was there, law enforcement officials allege, that Robinson fired off a single rifle shot, striking Kirk in the neck while he was speaking.
The accused, a “furry fixated” leftist whose alleged lover was a man pretending to be a woman, allegedly shot Kirk because he hated the Turning Point USA co-founder’s conservative’s point of view and the wide influence he held, particularly among the hundreds of thousands of young Americans involved in Turning Point.
As the notice of claim letter notes, Kirk had within less than a decade built the largest conservative campus and youth activist organizations in America. His social media footprint was massive, and his “political star was just rising.” He was a friend and adviser to President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and many other powerful Republicans.
He was also loathed by a left that has grown increasingly radical and violent in the Trump age.
The claim notes that the university and campus law enforcement failed to keep top of mind the constant threat of violence Kirk faced. At a “Freedom Night In America” event a few months before he died, Kirk said that Americans “should not have to walk around with security for your entire family and for myself just because you support a politician or political candidate or certain values.” He talked about how he and his family “get death threats — people want to murder us.”
The year before Kirk’s assassination, Trump, the Republican nominee for president, was shot by a gunman at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
‘Kirk’s Tragic Death Could Have Been Avoided’
According to the notice of claim, the university assigned “only six campus police officers,” or a quarter of the full UVU police force to the outdoor event attended by about 3,000 people. Long had sought approval for more officers from Tuminez, UVU’s president at the time, but his request was denied, the notice states.
“Further, the UVU Parties failed to ask for assistance from outside police forces, such as the Orem or Provo police. The Orem Police, with whom UVU has law enforcement cooperation agreements, did not receive a call for assistance until after the assassination,” the document claims. “Indeed, the UVU Parties’ planning was so deficient that when Mr. Kirk was shot first responders were not available and Mr. Kirk was transported to Timpanogos Regional Hospital in a private vehicle, not an ambulance.”
The university failed to take other safety measures, like creating and maintaining a secure perimeter of physical barriers around the Turning Point USA event that would have limited points of entry and exit, the letter charges. UVU officials also could have used metal detectors around campus, or even moved the event indoors to a more controllable space given the circumstances, the notice asserts.
The letter also claims UVU officials did not monitor closed-circuit TV footage in “real-time.” A review of footage during Robinson’s preliminary hearing showed the shooter “running across the roof” of the building to a “sniper’s nest.”
“If such footage had been monitored in real-time, Kirk’s tragic death could have been avoided,” the notice of claim asserts, adding that the campus police department could have used drones to secure the rooftops and sprawling venue.
The notice alleges that the university was well aware that students had often gone up on the building’s rooftop. UVU employees frequently found beer bottles and other trash there.
‘These Things, Unfortunately, They Happen’
Long called the assassination “a police chief’s nightmare.” UVU’s top cop told ABC News that he had worked with Kirk’s private security team in establishing security protocols for the outdoor event, which was Kirk’s opening stop on his nationwide tour of college campuses that he billed as The American Comeback Tour.
“We worked together. He has his team and they do this all over the country. We all know that. It’s not uncommon for them. They’re very comfortable on campuses. And I was coordinating with his lead security guy,” Long said at a press conference on the day of Kirk’s murder. He acknowledged that six campus police officers were on duty. The roster included plainclothes officers in the crowd.
“We train for these things, and you think you have things covered, and these things, unfortunately, they happen,” the police chief told reporters at the time. “You try to get your bases covered and, unfortunately, today we didn’t. Because of that, we have this tragic incident.”
A witness told ABC News that she was surprised that there was “no security check.”
“They didn’t check us for IDs. They didn’t pat us down. You just walked in,” Jasmine Martinez, a mother of five, told the corporate news outlet a few days after Kirk’s assassination.
Don Mihalek, a retired senior special agent for the U.S. Secret Service and an ABC News contributor, raised the same security issues noted in the Kirk family notice of claim. He questioned the location of the stage beneath the rooftops of campus buildings, particularly in light of the rooftop killer who fatally shot an attendee, injured two others, and grazed Trump’s ear at the Pennsylvania rally.
“In my view, in this day and age, you can’t not do proper advanced planning for an event, especially an outdoor event, and take into account all the standard security measures for an event,” Mihalek said in the story.
Robert Boyce, the retired chief of detectives for the New York Police Department and an ABC News contributor, agreed.
“For a controversial person speaking in any way, with any kind of petition, any outside threats we don’t know right now, you really can’t have it outside,” Boyce told the outlet. “You have to have a door to control and that’s important, especially in these times.”
A university official declined to comment at the time when contacted by ABC News.
‘Entirely Preventable’
UVU announced on September 22, 2025 that it would hire an independent company to conduct a review of its planning for Kirk’s event, including security measures. The university selected security consulting company The Lake Forest Group to conduct the review. It also tapped law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to assist. The request for proposal, issued last November and closed on Dec. 8, called for the review to include and assessment of “the university’s security and emergency preparation & response protocols and execution on September 10, 2025,” and set a completion deadline of “late spring 2026.”
A year after the infamous day, the university has yet to release the report, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. UVU’s new president, Jon Anderson, told the publication the consultants wanted the review “to be as complete and correct as possible, rather than fast.”
The university has spent at least $240,000 on the delayed report thus far.
Brett Parkinson, an attorney representing the Kirk Family, said the conservative icon’s murder was “entirely preventable” and would not have happened had the State of Utah and UVU “followed through on their stated security promises, which included protecting the rooftops surrounding the quad where Charlie was speaking.”
“Those failures not only robbed Charlie Kirk of his life, but also robbed his family of their husband, father, son, and brother, with impacts that will compound for the rest of their lives,” Parkinson said in a statement.
