Category: Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina Local News

The assassination of Charlie Kirk stunned first the audience at Utah Valley University, where he was shot while speaking Sept. 10, and then the country, as footage of his killing quickly spread. 

For many Americans, the conservative influencer’s death crystallized a growing fear: The United States is experiencing more and more political violence. 

Kirk, 31, had the ear of both everyday Americans and the most powerful people in the United States. He founded Turning Point USA, a conservative organization focused on young people, when he was 18. Until he was fatally shot in the neck during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, Kirk was close to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Kirk’s assassination followed numerous recent instances of political violence. In 2025 alone, Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were fatally shot; an arsonist set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family inside; an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was shot and injured outside a detention facility in Texas; the New Mexico Republican Party headquarters was set on fire; and a shooter attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters.

In 2024, Trump himself was the target of two assassination attempts. Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative recorded over 600 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials that year — a 74% increase from 2022. 

“In under a decade, violence has become a shockingly regular feature of American political life,” University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape wrote in “Foreign Affairs.” “Support for political violence has gone mainstream. … Political trends do not move in straight lines, and predicting the future can be a fool’s errand. But it is safe to say that the United States has a rough road ahead.”

How does the recent spate of violence compare historically?

Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks July 26, 2024, at an event in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)

Political violence is hardly unprecedented in the United States. In fact, the country has “a long, dark history” of violence that has “struck the highest level of American politics,” said Kevin Boyle, a Northwestern University historian.

“Over a third of the presidents in the 20th century experienced assassination attempts, and two of them were killed,” Boyle said. Activists were also assaulted and killed. 

During the Jim Crow era, in the first half of the 20th century, ordinary citizens, especially Black Americans, were regularly lynched. But historians say the closest analogue to today’s uptick in political violence is the 1960s and 1970s, when President John F. Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy and George Wallace were shot. Only Wallace survived.

While the perpetrators often had mental health issues, they seemed to have been shaped by the heated political times that seemed to polarize the population, said Kevin M. Schultz, a University of Illinois-Chicago historian.

Now, Americans are quick to excuse actions and speech that were once taboo, Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at Georgetown University, said. Luigi Mangione, charged in the December killing of United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson “has become a folk hero,” Hoffman said. A musical about Mangione that’s now in theaters is selling out. And elsewhere in the United States, Hoffman said, “the flags of terrorist organizations are a regular fixture at demonstrations and protests.”

Why is political violence happening now?

A note is left behind outside campus a day after the shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP)

Today’s political and rhetorical landscape is intensely polarized and fueled by anger, distrust and conspiracy theories. It’s easier to target your political opponents for violence if you see them as “enemies of the nation,” Boyle said.

Where does this enmity come from? Experts point to several sources, including social media, which exacerbated the high-voltage talk that had already existed for two decades in talk radio and cable news and “made it possible for violent rhetoric to reach vast numbers of people,” Boyle said.

The anonymity of social media also enables people to speak without personal consequence, while algorithms amplify even the most extreme voices, “leading politicians to embrace positions far more extreme than most Americans seek,” Schultz said.

American voters are actually less ideologically polarized than the fever-pitch rhetoric they consume suggests, according to Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

“Most partisans hold major misbeliefs about the other party’s preferences that lead them to think there is far less shared policy belief,” Kleinfeld has written. “This perception gap is highest among progressive activists, followed closely by extreme conservatives. In other words, the people who are most involved in civic and political life hold the least accurate views of the other side’s beliefs.”

And while the 1960s and 1970s might be our best analogue for the violence happening today, there are some key differences. Notably, political violence has become mainstream. 

“Most mainstream politicians in that era, outside of the Jim Crow south, avoided violent rhetoric,” Boyle said. “That’s no longer the case.”

Another important factor is the availability of guns.

Kirk was among about a dozen people killed by guns Sept. 10, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In 2023, nearly 47,000 people died of gun violence and about 38% were homicides.

“It’s a terrible thing to hate your political opponents, but the ready availability of guns makes it easier for people to act on their hatred,” Boyle said.

Meanwhile, the underfunding of mental health care has let dangerous people act without being stopped. 

Is political violence a feature of both the left and right?

In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, Trump and other conservatives blamed the left for political violence.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” Trump said in a video message.

“This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”

“The Left is the party of murder,” tech entrepreneur Elon Musk said on X.

But recent political violence has affected both Democrats and Republicans.

In addition to Kirk’s assassination and the attempts on Trump’s life, Republicans were targeted in a mass shooting at a congressional baseball practice in 2017. Democrats were targeted in the 2011 shooting of then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, D-Ariz.; a 2022 attack on the husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and the attacks on Hortman and Shapiro in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, respectively.

And on Jan. 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters who falsely claimed Democrats had stolen the 2020 election. When Trump won back the White House four years later, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone who had been charged in the attack.

In 2023, Reuters identified about 200 more instances of political violence since Jan. 6, 2021.

There’s a ripple effect. As political violence rises, Kleinfeld said, it will affect everyone, regardless of political party. 

“The more people justify violence from their side of the aisle, the more unhinged, aggressive people will commit violence from that side,” Kleinfeld said. “And the more that will justify the other side in doing the same.”

Faith, family and football will come together Friday night as Wake Forest High School plays at Wakefield High, the first game since the death of Ericka Lucas. 

The former Wake County high school principal died from her injuries earlier this week, almost two weeks after she was shot on Aug. 29 at a Wake Forest home on East Nelson Avenue. Wake Forest police said Lucas was not the person targeted in the shooting. 

Lucas was the principal at Rolesville High School for three school years before leaving in 2015. The tragic nature of her death—having been caught up in gunfire not meant for her—has friends and family members reeling.

Lucas was often seen at Wake Forest football games, where her husband, Reggie Lucas, has been the head coach since 2009.

For the first game since her death, Wake Forest High School families and community members are encouraging each other to wear blue in support of Reggie. Hundreds of people liked the Instagram post to show support for Coach Lucas during this unimaginable time. 

Ericka Lucas was a career educator and passionate about lifting up her community, qualities that her former colleagues say will be sorely missed. 

Millbrook High School assistant principal Sebastin Shipp said Lucas was one of the few African-American women to be a high school principal in Wake County at the time of her service. She was also the assistant principal at Millbrook from 2018 to 2020.

“She really strived to pass that energy and effort on to every single student that she met,” Shipp remarked. “She never let a student leave her presence without understanding that they have the capability of doing anything that they wanted or dreamed to do.”

The Wake Forest High School team will be at Wakefield High School starting at 7 p.m. Friday night. 

Dexter Lamont Mills, 18, and his 16-year-old cousin were arrested in connection with the crime on Tuesday. Mills appeared in court on Wednesday where he was held without bond on charges of first-degree murder and possession of a stolen firearm.

Charlie Kirk began plotting a way to mold young minds into conservatism at an age when he was still sorting out his own path. Looking to channel his political inclinations into action after a rejection from West Point, Kirk was 18 when he launched a grassroots organization from an Illinois garage that would grow alongside the rise of President Donald Trump and fuel the “Make America Great Again” movement.

Kirk admitted later he had “no money, no connections and no idea what I was doing” when he started Turning Point USA in 2012. But his rhetorical gifts for countering progressive ideas by inflaming cultural tensions and making provocative declarations instantly resonated with college audiences during the Obama administration and Trump’s first presidency.

As video clips of his early campus appearances spread online, it helped him secure a steady stream of donations that transformed Turning Point into one of the country’s largest political organizations, attracting young people to star-studded gatherings and making it a presence at high schools and colleges around the country.

“No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Trump said on Wednesday after Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah.

In the early stages, Kirk described his group as a student organization that advocated for free markets and limited government. He needled peers who bashed capitalism and backed presidential candidate and democratic socialist Bernie Sanders yet “shamelessly enjoy the fruits of the free market,” like Starbucks, Amazon and Netflix.

Over time, Turning Point began holding mass rallies that drew tens of thousands of young voters each year to hear top conservative leaders – Trump included – speaking on glitzy stages with massive screens, pyrotechnics and lighting shows befitting a stadium concert.

Alongside Turning Point’s growth, Kirk’s fame skyrocketed, and he leveraged his nonprofit, celebrity status and a successful podcast into considerable personal wealth.

It is not immediately clear who will lead Turning Point after Kirk’s death.

“You don’t replace a Charlie Kirk,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “He was unique.”

Kirk’s bread-and-butter remained anchored on college campuses. Students at North Carolina State University gathered to honor Kirk at a vigil for him and victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 24 years ago.

Turning Point USA held the vigil at NC State’s Talley Student Union, which was at capacity when the vigil began.

“I’ve been in a constant state of shock,” said Turning Point USA’s Wadeyn Norris in Raleigh. “You never think someone is capable of that. It’s hard to find the words.”

His final appearance on Wednesday at Utah Valley University was the opening event of his latest series, titled the “American Comeback Tour.”

In his college stops, Kirk would often sit beneath a tent, as he was when he was shot. He was often behind his “Prove Me Wrong” table, where he held forth.

He mainly drew young conservatives — many sporting “Make America Great Again” hats — who said they often felt unwelcome or out of place at school. And he had hundreds of Turning Point employees and volunteers there to recruit students into becoming GOP voters and activists themselves.

“He showed up to my undergraduate school a couple of months ago [and] I saw him,” said Brooke McKenzie, an NC State student. “It’s scary to think something like that could have happened when I was there listening to him.”

“I never had the chance to meet Charlie,” Norris said. “He’s one of the leading figures that inspired me with the conservative movement. It’s sad. I hope to be a torchbearer for his movement.”

The real draw, however, was Kirk arguing with students. He seemed to relish jeers when he had a less friendly audience.

Kirk frequently repeated Trump’s false claims that former Vice President Kamala Harris was directly responsible for all immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. He called George Floyd, a Black man whose death by a Minneapolis police officer sparked a national debate over racial injustice, a “scumbag.”

He espoused culturally conservative views, advocating for gun rights, condemning abortion, holding up women as wives and mothers — and men as heads of households. And he mastered the art of the “what about?” retort, turning questions back on progressives and liberals who challenged him.

Kirk was sometimes kept away from multiple schools. In 2018, Turning Point said a Chicago university denied requests for him to speak on their campus, citing safety concerns, and a Florida high school would not allow him to speak to students two months after a teenager with an assault rifle had killed 17 people there.

Tommy Richardson, a 36-year-old from Mesa, Arizona, arrived at the Turning Point headquarters after Kirk’s death was announced. He praised Kirk as a charismatic leader who helped shape his generation of conservatives and “was a champion of everything we believe.”

“That’s a huge legacy that will have repercussions for the political landscape for decades to come,” he said.

In 2024, Kirk used his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to praise Trump as an economic master and argue that Gen Z voters could not afford another Democratic administration.

“Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to illegals and foreign nations, while Gen Z has to pinch pennies just so that they can never own a home, never marry, and work until they die, childless,” he said.

Speaking directly to his generation, the multimillionaire influencer said, “You don’t have to stay poor. You don’t have to accept being worse off than your parents. You don’t have to support leaders who lied to you and took advantage of you for your vote.”

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of the 2024 electorate, 47% of voters aged 18-29 opted for Trump, while 51% went for Harris. But that was a much narrower gap than in 2020, when Joe Biden outpaced Trump 61% to 36%.

“I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Charlie Kirk. He’s really an amazing guy. Amazing guy. And his whole staff for their relentless efforts to achieve this very historic victory,” Trump said at a Turning Point gathering in Arizona last December.

Vice President JD Vance said Kirk’s influence continued past the inauguration.

“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance said on X late Wednesday. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”

Several young politicians and figures credit Kirk with inspiring or boosting their public careers.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was one of the first “to believe in me.” When she ran for Congress from New Hampshire in 2022, Kirk endorsed her in the Republican primary. She lost the general election.

Kirk “believed in the potential and promise of young people,” she said. “He inspired millions of them to get involved in politics and fight for our nation’s conservative values.”

Vance said Kirk first reached out through a private message on Twitter after a Fox News appearance in 2017 when he was an author and not a politician. They became friends, and Kirk was one of the first people Vance called when he thought of running for the U.S. Senate in early 2021. Kirk introduced him to people who eventually ran his campaign — and to Donald Trump Jr.

“Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him too,” Vance posted on X.

Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican congresswoman, said Kirk recruited her as national Hispanic outreach director when she was planning to attend medical school.

“He’s part of the reason I’m in office right now,” Luna said of Kirk from outside the Capitol Wednesday.

Kennedy Peterson, 20, was among the young people who came to Turning Point headquarters after Kirk’s death was announced Wednesday.

WRAL reporter Heidi Kirk contributed to this report.

“From the day that he started with the Campus Victory Project, I think that his intentions were to create a world that he thought was better than what we have now,” Peterson said.

_______ Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Washington, and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, contributed to this report.

Nearly one year after Microsoft Corp. purchased Person County’s 1350-acre Mega Park, residents and activists are raising concerns about the technology giant potentially making plans to build a data center on the site.

WRAL News reported the $26.85 million purchase in October of last year. At the time, it was unclear what exactly Microsoft intended to do with the land. The company didn’t immediately provide a comment when reached by WRAL News.

Now, people living near the site are asking Microsoft and Person County Commissioners for answers about what the company plans to do with the land amid word of potential plans for a data center.

“Why does it need to be such a secret?” questions Fred Hobbs, who lives next door to the mega site. “Why can’t the people of Person County know?”

Much of the speculation comes from a slideshow presentation by American Petroleum Institute Southeast Director David McGowan, presented to the NC House Energy and Public Utilities Committee on March 5, 2025. The presentation was about the state of natural gas in North Carolina.

One slide of McGowan’s report shows information and graphics about manufacturing and data centers in the state and across the country. On a map of North Carolina, McGowan shows a star placed on Person County, labeled “Microsoft data center”.

WRAL News reached out to McGowan on Thursday to learn more about that information. McGowan has not yet responded.

According to Person County Commission Chairman Kyle Puryear, county leaders have not heard anything from Microsoft.

“Right now, no plans have been made as far as I’m aware,” Puryear told WRAL. “We’re uncertain what the project is going to be, but we welcome Microsoft in whatever capacity they would like to come into Person County. We look forward to Microsoft being a good corporate citizen.”

WRAL News spoke with Stephanie Gans, Assistant Director of the non-profit organization Clean Water for NC. Gans has kept an eye on the mega site since Microsoft purchased the land. She has also spoken with people living near the site about their concerns.

“Communities across the state of North Carolina, especially rural communities, have started to voice a lot of concerns about data centers because of their very large footprint in communities,” Gans said. “These are huge, sprawling campuses that take a lot of energy, and usually a lot of water in order to run. Community members are both feeling it in terms of the noise that [data centers make as well as the impact on their local environment.”

The Chatham County Sheriff’s Office is searching Jordan Lake for someone who is believed to be experiencing a mental health crisis. 

Around 5 a.m. Thursday, WRAL News received a tip about authorities leaving a boat ramp at Jordan Lake.

Deputies confirmed they began searching Wednesday night near the U.S. Highway 64 bridge after receiving information about the person’s last known location. 

Deputies found an unoccupied vehicle near the bridge. 

The search remains ongoing as of 10 a.m. Thursday. The sheriff’s office is
conducting the search with assistance from Chatham County Emergency Management,
Lee County Emergency Management, the North Chatham Volunteer Fire Department and North Carolina State Parks.