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(NEW YORK) — A Utah judge ruled that Tyler Robinson can stand trial on a capital murder charge stemming from the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Judge Tony Graf’s decision follows final oral arguments from both sides in the high-profile case in a Provo courtroom on Tuesday, during which attorneys primarily debated an aggravating factor that would make Robinson eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

“Viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, this evidence is sufficient at this stage to support a reasonable belief the defendant is the individual who shot and killed Charlie Kirk,” Graf said.

The judge also found that there was a reasonable known risk of death to others at the time of the shooting, allowing prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

A statement on behalf of the Kirk family said the judge’s decision marked an important step in their pursuit of justice.

“Every step in this process carries the weight of all that Charlie’s murder has taken from his family, especially his children who will grow up without their father,” the statement said. “We are grateful to all who have continued to pray for us, support us, and stand with us through a year of unimaginable grief.”

The statement continued: “As the next phase of the judicial process begins, our family remains united in our love for Charlie, our commitment to the pursuit of justice, and our prayer for a transparent and timely process.”

Robinson is accused of killing Kirk with a rifle shot fired from a building’s rooftop approximately 415 feet from where the co‑founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA was speaking at an outdoor rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Sept. 10, 2025.

The 23-year-old suspect was charged with aggravated murder, a capital felony, which alleges that others were knowingly endangered in the shooting. He was also charged with felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child.

Judge Graf found probable cause for Robinson to stand trial on all charges. Not guilty pleas were entered on the defendant’s behalf following the judge’s ruling.

Prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty in the case.

“The defendant, this man, Tyler James Robinson, shot and killed Charlie Kirk because he disagreed with him, and he did it by firing a high-powered rifle into a crowd of over 3,000 people, which created a great risk of death that anyone would know about,” Utah County prosecutor Ryan McBride told the judge during Tuesday’s hearing.

McBride said there is a “mountain of evidence” proving Robinson is the gunman who killed Kirk — citing video footage, DNA evidence on the suspected murder weapon and an alleged admission by Robinson in a note to his boyfriend — and argued that the alleged politically motivated shooting posed a great risk of death to others, including children, who were at the rally.

“It’s not that the defendant didn’t see all these people. He obviously did. He had to. It’s that he didn’t care,” McBride said. “He came on a mission to kill Charlie Kirk, and if he missed, so be it. He was prepared to take other shots. Let the casualties be what they may.”

Defense attorney Staci Visser asked the judge to strike the “great risk of death” aggravating factor that makes the offense eligible for the death penalty, arguing during Tuesday’s hearing that it’s not supported by the facts of the case.

“There’s nothing in this evidence showing that there was a great risk that someone else was going to be killed,” she said.

Defense attorneys also challenged charges and enhancements alleging that Robinson knew children were present during the shooting, tampered with a witness by telling his boyfriend to “ask for a lawyer and stay silent” if questioned by the police, and targeted Kirk because of the conservative activist’s political expression.

“There’s no evidence as to really what was in Mr. Robinson’s mind, if in fact he was the shooter, about Charlie Kirk, because we have no testimony that Mr. Robinson had ever spoken about Charlie Kirk, that he had ever heard anything he’d said, that he’d ever discussed anything,” defense attorney Richard Novak said during Tuesday’s hearing.

During a week-long preliminary hearing in July, prosecutors called several law enforcement witnesses and presented a series of security videos allegedly placing Robinson at the scene of the shooting. One of the videos showed Robinson on the roof of the building where the fatal shot that killed Kirk was fired from, prosecutors alleged.

Prosecutors also presented a video statement from Robinson’s roommate and romantic partner, Lance Twiggs, who claimed in a redacted videotaped interview with prosecutors and detectives that Robinson confessed to killing Kirk in a letter, text messages, and in person.

In a written argument filed ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors said they showed there is enough probable cause to warrant a trial.

“This is likely as straightforward a bind-over decision as this Court will ever see,” prosecutors stated.

In its written argument, the defense countered that the state failed to establish probable cause due to its “extensive use” of hearsay evidence that it said was not assessed for reliability.

“For this reason alone, the Court must decline bindover,” the defense stated.

The defense cited alleged communications between Robinson and Twiggs, who did not testify in the preliminary hearing, that were admitted through Twigg’s videotaped interview.

Defense attorneys also argued in the filing that prosecutors failed to meet the burden of proof for the aggravated murder charge.

Prosecutors alleged in their filing that Robinson “fired a high-powered rifle towards a crowd of thousands,” endangering the lives of “everyone who was in his line of fire” or near Kirk. In response, the defense said only a single shot was fired above the crowd and argued that the evidence does not support that “the shooter was aware that there was a high probability that someone else may die from his single gunshot that hit the intended victim.”

ABC News’ Alex Stone and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — A Pennsylvania police officer has been charged with voluntary manslaughter stemming from the fatal shooting this month of a college student whose parents said he was mistaken for a burglar after knocking on the door of a residence he wrongly thought was a friend’s house, authorities said.

Cpl. Sean Farrell, a veteran member of the Upper Pottsgrove Township Police Department, was charged in the Aug. 23 death of Glenwood “Bubba” Pysher, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele announced at a news conference Tuesday.

Steele said he is “obligated under the law” to charge Farrell, who allegedly shot Pysher twice after responding to a 911 call from a homeowner reporting a break-in in progress.

“At the time these two fatal shots were fired, Mr. Pysher had his hands up,” Steele said, citing footage from Farrell’s body-worn camera. “He had no weapon. He did not charge the officer or act aggressively in any way. He was not a threat to the homeowners who were inside their residence.”

Steele further said that the body-worn camera video, which he did not play but from which he released a still image, showed Farrell claim to a colleague after the shooting that Pysher “charged” him while “screaming and yelling.”

“The body-worn camera video does not depict Pysher charging and does not depict yelling or screaming prior to the shooting,” Steele said.

Pysher’s parents told ABC News last week that before the shooting, their son had been out bar-hopping with a group celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday.

Pysher’s mother, Erin Pysher, said that when the group decided to move the celebration to a friend’s house, her son walked to what he wrongly thought was the correct address.

“He was walking down the road to what he thought was his friend’s house. And after some drinks, he ended up walking in the dark at night. I guess he got mixed up, and he made a wrong turn and went to the wrong house,” Erin Pysher said in a phone interview with ABC News.

Pysher said her son was a student at Saint Elizabeth University in Morris Township, New Jersey, and was expected to begin the new school year last week.

Steele said on Tuesday that while Pysher was apparently inebriated, he was complying with Farrell’s orders to put his hands up when he was shot.

“He was not trying to escape and he did not commit a forcible felony. This is not a legal use of lethal force under Pennsylvania law,” Steele said.

Farrell is being arraigned on the voluntary manslaughter charge Tuesday, according to Steele.

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(LOS ANGELES) — Two people are dead and at least one person remains missing following a major flash-flooding event at the Grand Canyon over the weekend, as cadaver dogs are expected to be used in the ongoing search of the devastated areas, authorities said.

The current missing-person count is based on overnight camping permits issued by the park, officials said, while acknowledging that additional day hikers who did not have permits could also be missing.

“There are day hikers that come in the canyon that we don’t know about,” Dave Black, the Grand Canyon National Park Service’s incident commander, said at a news conference Monday evening.

Black said that the weather is expected to be clear Tuesday for the first time since Saturday afternoon’s flash flood, allowing ground crews to be sent to the hard-hit areas. Four teams with cadaver dogs are planning to search the Bright Angel Creek and Phantom Ranch areas Tuesday, he added.

Authorities said hundreds of tips have been received but so far, there is no reason to believe anyone else is missing other than the one person already being sought.

A Border Patrol technical search team will search for the remaining confirmed missing person, Black said. Authorities said they will also use Bluetooth technology and a drone to search the area.

“We are absolutely holding out hope that that person is still alive,” Black said.

The National Park Service confirmed that two people have been killed in the deadly flash flooding.

On Sunday evening, officials said the body of a 46-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was recovered near Crystal Rapids along the Colorado River. The family of the other recovered victim identified him as Dr. John Giusti, a Texas chiropractor and married father of three daughters.

Flash flooding unfolded about 2:30 p.m. local time Saturday in the Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch area, both popular destinations for hikers. Authorities said 82 people were rescued from the canyon, most by helicopter. A couple of people were able to hike out, they said.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the response to the flash flood emergency.

Deputy Superintendent Brian Drapeaux of the Grand Canyon National Park Service said at Monday’s news conference that water-level gauges installed in Bright Angel Creek following last year’s Dragon Bravo Fire on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon stopped working during the flood.

“That system started to alert us of rising waters, and then shortly after, that system went offline as water progressed down the creek and picked up speed and destructive force,” Drapeaux said.

It’s unclear why the water-level gauge system stopped working, Drapeaux said, adding that debris that filled the creek could have knocked it offline.

Flood survivors told ABC News that they ran for their lives when a flood swept through the floor of the Grand Canyon on Saturday afternoon, wiping out campgrounds, structures, hiking trails and vital infrastructure, according to officials.

“The National Park Service is asking anyone who knows of hikers or backpackers who were in the inner canyon along the Bright Angel Creek corridor on August 29, as well as anyone who had a campground reservation in the affected corridor, to provide information to the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB),” the National Park Service said in a statement.

On Sunday, NPS officials said more than 20 people had initially been reported missing and that 62 individuals were air evacuated from Grand Canyon’s Phantom Ranch and the lower North Kaibab Trail, “which was affected by a significant flash-flood event Saturday afternoon.”

“The flash flood resulted in significant impacts to infrastructure throughout Bright Angel Canyon. Nearly all footbridges spanning Bright Angel Creek were destroyed, eliminating hiker access across the creek,” the Grand Canyon NPS said.

Saturday’s flash-flood event occurred after four rounds of rain swept across parts of the Grand Canyon over a span of about six hours, according to the National Weather Service. The initial three rounds were not very heavy but saturated the soil and left the area much more prone to dangerous flash flooding once the fourth round of torrential rain moved through.

The steepness of the canyon and the burn scar from last year’s Dragon Bravo Fire on the North Rim were likely major contributors, the NWS said.

Videos of the flooding obtained by ABC News show a roaring Colorado River as mudflows and debris from metal structures are seen floating down the river.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A nationwide wave of protesters and vandals targeting surveillance cameras made by Flock Safety did not deter a man in a Darth Vader costume from praising the devices at a recent city council meeting in San Diego, California. His “Star Wars”-themed acclaim, as it turned out, was anything but.

“The Emperor is a fan of Flock,” the man told elected officials in a mocking tone last week. “We must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum.”

So far this year, more than 50 cities and counties have canceled or deactivated automated license plate-recognition (ALPR) cameras of the type manufactured by Flock Safety and other firms, also known as Flock cameras, Politico found.

On Monday, Florida’s state transportation office revoked the ability of local law enforcement to put license plate readers on state highways.

Flock cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states, including incidents in which individuals sawed down the devices and shot at them with guns, NPR reported last month.

The neighborhood cameras have prompted pushback in localities big and small, dotting red and blue states. Privacy concerns have been stoked in part by instances of police officers tracking ex-partners or other relations, some analysts and advocates told ABC News.

Wariness about the role of artificial intelligence in the technology has deepened public unease, tapping into discontent about the possibility of AI acting beyond human oversight, they added.

“This is the biggest, most grassroots privacy backlash that I’ve ever seen in more than 20 years working on these issues,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told ABC News.

“It just shows people don’t like mass surveillance,” Stanley added.

Surveillance technology firms and a law enforcement expert, however, touted the cameras as a valuable tool for police departments, leaving officers better equipped to protect public safety.

“You can see in some cases unsolved crimes may have been solved if there were a Flock camera in the area at the time,” Kenneth Gray, a lecturer in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of New Haven, told ABC News. “They can be useful.”

More than 135,000 automated license plate-recognition cameras have been identified nationwide, and four of every five of those are made by Flock Safety, according to crowdsourced data from DeFlock.org. The company says its cameras operate in 49 states.

Flock cameras, which sit atop metal roadside poles resembling streetlights, capture a vehicle’s license plate number and characteristics as it passes, Flock Safety says on its website. The devices do not identify individuals in a given car, nor do they record continuously, the company adds.

Earlier this month, the firm bolstered safeguards for its cameras, including a default data-retention period of seven days instead of 30, as well as an “Evidence Mode” for preserving data related to an active investigation.

“Flock is designed to help authorized users find relevant evidence for investigations without compromising safety and compliance,” the Flock Safety website says. “Clear safeguards define how information is stored, accessed, shared, and reviewed.”

Flock Safety did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

The technology has triggered some police abuse involving its recordings. A police officer in Kentucky was arrested last week after authorities alleged he used Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend more than 2,000 times. In Savannah, Georgia, six police department employees were fired in August over alleged abuse of Flock cameras, according to local ABC affiliate WJCL.

The nonprofit Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, says it has identified more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, among them stalking and wrongful stops.

“People have a sense, ‘I wouldn’t want someone following me around in a car; and I wouldn’t want them doing it with a camera,'” Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, an advocacy group organizing against Flock cameras, told ABC News.

“Then when these stories come out about law enforcement officers using it to stalk their exes, it reminds people once you build a surveillance apparatus like this, it can and will be abused,” Greer added.

The use of AI in Flock cameras has exacerbated concern among some critics, analysts said, since they fear data could be compiled and examined by the technology with limited oversight.

“These companies are not just recording that you were on this street at this time on this day; they’re also allowing law enforcement to run algorithms to decide whether your movement patterns are ‘suspicious,'” said Stanley, of the ACLU.

Surveillance companies and a law enforcement expert promoted the crime-fighting benefits of Flock cameras. They pointed to the unique information provided by a network of devices that can identify and track vehicle movements.

Flock Safety says it helped authorities locate more than 10,000 missing people last year, amounting to more than 27 per day. Roughly 1 million criminal investigations were supported by Flock in 2025, the company says.

Flock Safety cameras helped law enforcement identify the car belonging to a suspect in the murder of a Brown University professor last year, aiding efforts to track down the individual, Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said in December. The suspect died by suicide before he was located.

The surveillance capability that unnerves some critics can be vital to a police investigation, according to Gray, of the University of New Haven.

“Because there’s a series of Flock cameras, you can put together a pattern of where a particular car goes at a certain time of day along a particular route,” he said. “That can be useful in putting together details that can be analyzed to try to fill in gaps for an investigation.”

Still, Gray acknowledged, the camera system collects information on many innocent people, vacuuming up data of no utility for law enforcement.

“The Flock system is building a database without any allegation of criminal activity. It’s useful to law enforcement after the fact, but it’s also gathering up information on many people that have committed no crime,” Gray said.

Critics of Flock cameras lauded local efforts to cancel or alter contracts with surveillance companies. They said they hoped additional restrictions would be implemented on a wider scale.

Greer, of Fight for the Future, advocated for a nationwide ban of the technology, saying “there are certain types of weapons we’ve decided as a society are too dangerous to sit in the basement of your local police department.”

Torin Monahan, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in surveillance, said law enforcement should be required to possess a judicial warrant in order to access Flock camera data.

“If they have to prove probable cause and protect people’s 4th Amendment rights, as they do with other evidence, I think that would be reasonable,” Monahan told ABC News.

Gray, the law enforcement expert, agreed.

“A warrant for the information from the database would protect the public from misuse,” he said.

The backlash has prompted action from state and national elected officials belonging to both major parties.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbot last week paused state funding of Flock cameras. Meanwhile, Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in recent days he would welcome a bipartisan bill to ban Flock cameras in the state.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, on Friday announced an investigation into Flock Safety, penning an open letter to the company that included a request for internal documents.

“I want law enforcement to have tools to catch offenders and keep the public safe. But Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LOS ANGELES) — Two people are dead and one person remains missing following deadly flash flooding at the Grand Canyon over the weekend, as rescuers brace for more treacherous weather, authorities said.

The current missing-person count is based on permits issued by the park, park officials said, while acknowledging that additional day hikers who did not have permits could also be missing.

Authorities said hundreds of tips have been received but, so far, there is no reason to believe anyone besides the one person already being sought is missing.

A Border Patrol technical search team will search for the remaining missing person. Authorities said they will also use Bluetooth technology and a drone to search the damaged area.

The National Park Service confirmed that two people have been killed in the deadly flash flooding.

On Sunday evening, officials said the body of a 46-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was recovered near Crystal Rapids along the Colorado River. The family of the other recovered victim identified him as Dr. John Giusti, a Texas chiropractor and married father of three daughters.

Flash flooding unfolded about 2:30 p.m. local time Saturday in the Bright Angel Canyon and Phantom Ranch area, both popular destinations for hikers. Authorities said 82 people were rescued from the canyon, most by helicopter. A couple of people were able to hike out, they said.

Flood survivors told ABC News that they ran for their lives when a flood swept through the floor of the Grand Canyon on Saturday afternoon, wiping out campgrounds, structures, hiking trails and vital infrastructure, according to officials.

“The National Park Service is asking anyone who knows of hikers or backpackers who were in the inner canyon along the Bright Angel Creek corridor on August 29, as well as anyone who had a campground reservation in the affected corridor, to provide information to the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB),” the National Park Service said in a statement.

On Sunday, NPS officials said more than 20 people had initially been reported missing and that 62 individuals were air evacuated from Grand Canyon’s Phantom Ranch and the lower North Kaibab Trail, “which was affected by a significant flash-flood event Saturday afternoon.”

“The flash flood resulted in significant impacts to infrastructure throughout Bright Angel Canyon. Nearly all footbridges spanning Bright Angel Creek were destroyed, eliminating hiker access across the creek,” the Grand Canyon NPS said.

Saturday’s flash-flood event occurred after four rounds of rain swept across parts of the Grand Canyon over a span of about six hours, according to the National Weather Service. The initial three rounds were not very heavy but saturated the soil and left the area much more prone to dangerous flash flooding once the fourth round of torrential rain moved through.

The steepness of the canyon and the burn scar from last year’s Dragon Bravo Fire on the North Rim were likely major contributors, the NWS said.

Videos of the flooding obtained by ABC News show a roaring Colorado River as mudflows and debris from metal structures are seen floating down the river.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.