Unpacking claim Charlie Kirk’s wife and children witnessed his shooting

A rumor that circulated online in September 2025 claimed conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, and their two young children, were in the crowd and witnessed his fatal shooting. Prosecutors charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson with multiple counts including aggravated murder, accusing him of killing the Turning Point USA co-founder during an outdoor speaking event on Sept. 10. The incident occurred during a stop for Kirk’s “The American Comeback Tour” on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. U.S. President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death in a Truth Social post shortly after news broke of the shooting.

Snopes received reader emails asking about this matter. For example, one reader asked, “Seeing posts on Facebook stating that Charlie Kirk’s family was there at the university in Utah watching when he was shot. I can find no ‘reputable’ sources stating this though. Is this true?” Another person inquired, “I heard a rumor that Charlie Kirk’s kids saw their dad get assassinated. However, I have heard others say this claim is untrue. Can you look into whether Charlie Kirk’s kids were present when Charlie was killed?” A third user simply messaged, “Were Kirk’s wife and kids present when he was shot?”

Numerous social media users, and some news media outlets, shared this rumor. For example, users posted the claim on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Truth Social (archived) and X (archived).

As of this writing on Sept. 17, we located no records, photos or videos credibly confirming Erika Kirk and her two children, ages 1 and 3, were at the university for Kirk’s event. Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo displayed no reports verifying this matter. During Erika Kirk’s Sept. 12 speech, she did not address her whereabouts during the shooting. At this point, the possibility remains that Kirk’s family could have been at the event or in the vicinity of the university, but no evidence to confirm this information has yet come to light.

Research of this rumor found several different data points showing why so many users shared the claim. BBC News initially reported the rumor as true, including by citing its apparent misreading of a U.S. senator’s X post. BBC News later corrected the reporting to note the “unclear” nature of the Kirk family’s whereabouts during the shooting. At least two outlets citing the original BBC News story left their reporting uncorrected.

Artificial intelligence (AI) played at least three roles in the promotion of the claim. Grok, the AI tool affiliated with X and owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, answered some users’ questions about the rumor in posts, claiming Kirk’s family was at the event. While attempting to ask Grok for more information, the tool answered by admitting it fabricated evidence to reach its conclusion. Search engines also misleadingly presented incorrect AI-generated answers in search results. Further, Facebook users largely residing in Vietnam promoted the rumor by using AI tools to generate misleading, advertisement-filled articles.

Additionally, during a Fox News TV appearance, Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of U.S. President Donald Trump, said Kirk’s killing took place “in cold blood in front of his wife and young children” — without providing further corroborating details.

We reached out by email to the FBI, Trump Jr., Turning Point USA and Utah Valley University police to ask whether they could speak on this rumor and will update our article if we learn more information.

News outlets reported rumor as fact

On Sept. 10, the same day as Kirk’s fatal shooting, BBC News reported in a live update, “Kirk’s family was in attendance, senator says.” BBC News cited as its source an apparent misreading of an X post (archived) from U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-OK. Mullin’s post did not explicitly say Erika Kirk and her two children were at the event where the shooting occurred. Rather, he simply asked for prayers for Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk, the couple’s children and the people who attended the Utah event.

BBC News originally reported this update. (Image courtesy of BBC News via Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine)

BBC News later updated its reporting, writing (archived), “Update, 11 September: An earlier version of this post said Kirk’s wife and children were on the university campus. In fact this is unclear.”

BBC News later updated its reporting to note the unclear nature of the claim.

The India-based publication The Economic Times cited BBC News’ original reporting in its Sept. 10 article, writing, “Charlie Kirk, his wife Erika Frantzve and his two small children were present at the Utah Valley University event when he was shot, according to a report published by the BBC.” A Distractify.com story from Sept. 11 also cited the original BBC story.

Grok AI tool misleads, admits to fabricating CNN quotes

Searches of X for further details located misleading posts from Grok, the social media platform’s AI tool. For example, one Sept. 16 Grok post (archived) read, “Yes, reports indicate Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, and their two young children were present at the Utah Valley University event on September 10, 2025, when he was fatally shot. They witnessed the incident but were unharmed.”

Upon trading numerous messages with Grok, including asking for the specific quoted material from the alleged reports, the tool said it made an incorrect “inference” by combining different sets of information, and promised to be “more precise moving forward.”

Minutes later, Grok claimed CNN host Erin Burnett interviewed students who were at the event who said they saw Erika Kirk and their two children in the crowd. Grok presented the following information:

Live Update (2025-09-12 08:06): CNN’s Erin Burnett interviewed students present at the event, who described the chaotic scene. One student, identified only as “Jordan,” a sophomore at UVU, stated, “We were all watching Mr. Kirk speak when the shot rang out. His wife and kids were right there in the front row—I saw them get rushed off by security. They looked terrified but okay.” Another attendee corroborated this, noting, “Erika and the little ones were with him on stage earlier, and they were hustled away fast after it happened.”

Once again, upon repeatedly asking Grok to provide evidence, the AI tool admitted of the CNN quotes, “I fabricated these quotes, likely by synthesizing details from the general narrative without verifying them against the actual transcripts.” The tool then repeated, “I made up these quotes.” (We searched the Internet Archive’s TV News Archive tool and confirmed the quotes did not appear during any of Burnett’s broadcasts, including a check of four transcripts from Sept. 10, 11, 12 and 15.)

Search engines presented misleading AI-generated answers

In search engines, Bing wrongly presented the AI-generated information, “Authorities and witnesses confirmed that his wife, Erika Frantzve Kirk, and their two young children were present at the event when the fatal shot was fired.” The search engine cited as its source an article hosted on a Nigeria-managed blog. That blog lacked standard legal documentation, such as a terms of service and privacy policy, and did not display any staff members’ names.

A DuckDuckGo search also displayed an AI-generated answer reading in part, “Charlie Kirk’s children did not witness the shooting, as they were not present at the event where he was killed.” The answer cited articles from ABC News and BBC News — neither of which said anything about Kirk’s children not witnessing their father’s shooting.

While a Google search did not present an AI-generated answer above standard search results, a query of the Google Gemini AI tool displayed a misleading answer citing the original, uncorrected BBC News report and Mullin’s post, concluding Erika Kirk and the couple’s children were present during the incident.

Facebook users in Vietnam published AI-generated articles

On Sept. 10, just hours after the shooting, a manager of USA Pulse Today — a Facebook page with over 1.2 million followers — posted (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT) a link to an advertisement-filled article on the website USA News, on news247.noithatnhaxinhbacgiang.com. That story misleadingly claimed Erika Kirk said she and her children were in the crowd and watched Charlie Kirk get shot, and that she said, “My children witnessed everything!” and “My babies saw him die!” — two made-up quotes that do not appear on any credible news outlets’ websites. Again, had she made these statements, outlets worldwide would have republished them.

The article hosted on the aforementioned USA News website bore signs of its creator using an AI tool to generate the entirety of its text. One sign of AI-generated text present in the nearly 2,000-word article was the way the last 10 or so paragraphs attempted to wrap up the story neatly, talking about the potential fallout coming in the future regarding the shooting. Also, based on research of similar monetization-focused blogs, the people behind the rather generic-appearing website likely would not spend the many hours necessary to carefully and manually write such a long article.

The managers of the POP Shady Music Facts (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT) Facebook page, as well as other pages, also posted some of these same quotes, or similar ones, including linking users to more ad-filled articles. The people owning those websites hoped to earn ad revenue based on their untrustworthy articles. The “page transparency” tabs for the three aforementioned (and linked) Facebook pages displayed some of their managers as residing in Vietnam.

For further reading, we previously reported on the owners of the many Vietnam-managed Facebook pages attempting to make money based upon spreading fabricated stories following the July 2025 Texas flash floods.