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The student who asked Charlie Kirk a question about gun deaths seconds before he was shot and killed still wonders if he should have asked a different question.
Hunter Kozak has been accused of signalling the gunman who targeted the far-right activists as he was on stage debating students at Utah Valley University in September.
The mathematics students has spent weeks preparing for the moment he was debate Charlie, 31, memorising statistics on gun violence.
In particular, Hunter, 29, wanted to challenge him on his assertation transgender people are more likely to be mass shooters.
He said: ‘I had researched the statistics of mass shootings and I was ready to defend my findings. I had hoped to change people’s minds.
‘I wonder so much about how it would have played out differently if I had asked that question and Charlie died defending the Epstein list instead.
‘It’s very strange to think about how small choices I made went on to affect the whole political climate.’
As Charlie sat in the shade with his microphone ready, Hunter stepped up and asked his question.
He said: ‘Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?’
Charlie replied: ‘Too many.’
Hunter followed: ‘In America, it’s five. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been over the last ten years?’
Charlie responded, asking: ‘Counting or not counting gang violence?’
Seconds after Hunter replied, ‘not counting’, Charlie was shot.
In the immediate aftermath, footage shows Hunter shaking for a few seconds before ducking to the ground.
He said: ‘I’ve been dealing with profound grief after witnessing something like that. I think one of the hardest things about it is that I’m in a very unique circumstance, and I’m really struggling to interact with other people because of that.’
(Picture: AP)
Tyler Robinson has been arrested over Charlie’s death, but eight months on Hunter continues to blame himself.
Conspiracy theorists analysed the moments before the shooting and looked at Hunter’s reaction frame-by-frame.
They posited Hunter had sent a signal to the shooter, with some accusing him of being a ‘paid actor’. He still receives death threats.
He told The Times: ‘Why would I need to give a signal? What would I give a signal of? And anyway, I was a few feet away from him, right in the line of fire. I don’t know, it all feels so bizarre.
‘People treated me as if I wasn’t a real person, like some character in their John Grisham novel.
‘I disagree vehemently with almost everything Charlie Kirk said. But he was also a human being. He was a father-of-two like me, and his children have to grow up without a father.’
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