A man who falsely confessed to taking Charlie Kirk’s life has been charged with obstruction of justice after making a questionable admission to investigators.
Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University on Wednesday (September 10).
As the real culprit escaped into a nearby wooded area, authorities detained and later released two people unconnected to the case.
One of them was 71-year-old George Zinn, who approached the police immediately after the fatal attack and yelled, “I shot him, now shoot me.”
Image credits: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
Zinn was reportedly armed. Footage from the scene shows the political agitator being detained while witnesses insulted him, calling him a “monster” and shouting, “How dare you?” In other clips, Zinn provokes the crowd, telling them, “Shoot me.”
A police officer at the scene was heard saying, “He said he shot him, but I don’t know,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
After being detained, Zinn repeatedly asked to see his lawyer before admitting that he didn’t commit the crime and that he had intended to cause a distraction “to draw attention” from the real criminal, now believed to be 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.
Image credits: ABC4 Utah
The 71-year-old was later taken to a hospital due to a pre-existing medical condition and made another disturbing admission, confessing that he “wanted to be a martyr for the person who was shot,” according to court documents.
Zinn was charged with obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony. Police said his false confession delayed the investigation of the crime and diverted valuable law enforcement resources.
The activist, who had been charged with trespassing on August 22, is known by authorities for exhibiting disruptive behavior at many events, including film festivals, protests, and political rallies.
Image credits: Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Image credits: charliekirk11
“Almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background, listening,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the Salt Lake Tribune.
“He’s a person who can be odd, and has those kinds of sometimes odd behavior challenges,” added Gill, who has prosecuted Zinn a number of times, dating back to the 1980s.
“But by and large, he’s more of a gadfly than anything else.
Zinn said he wanted to “draw attention” from the real culprit, now believed to be Tyler Robinson
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Image credits: Utah County Sheriff’s Office
Gill said his office tried to get Zinn into mental health court for past misdemeanor charges, but that the 71-year-old “never really participated in that.”
The district attorney, who described Zinn as a libertarian conservative, said many of his arrests were for trespassing.
His most serious arrest came in 2013, when he was charged with threatening multiple lives at the Salt Lake City Marathon and spent a year in prison.
Robinson was arrested after his father identified him in FBI footage from the scene
Image credits: FBI Salt Lake City
Zinn was reportedly arrested in January on suspicion of trespassing after he tried to get into the Sundance Film Festival, from which he was banned.
In recent years, he attended Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s 2023 ‘State of the County’ address, a 2023 Sutherland Institute event, and former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes’s 2020 announcement that he was running for governor.
Zinn was previously detained in 2019 after participating in a protest in Salt Lake City against the Utah Inland Port Authority. In 2003, he was a spectator at a Colorado court hearing for Kobe Bryant when the NBA star faced a s*xual assault charge, the Associated Press reported.
Image credits: LizCrokin
There is no indication that Zinn knows the primary suspect, Tyler Robinson. The 22-year-old from Utah was arrested on Thursday after his father recognized him in footage released by the FBI and convinced him to turn himself in.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that DNA on a towel wrapped around a rifle believed to have been used by the sniper matched that of Robinson.
After the FBI released photos of the suspect, Robison reportedly joked about the crime with members of a Discord group chat. When one user pointed out his resemblance to the suspect, Robinson said that his “doppelgänger” was trying to get him “in trouble.”
Zinn has been arrested multiple times for trespassing and causing disruptions at political events
Image credits: DatFishGuy
He also said that he would avoid McDonald’s, referencing the place where suspected assassin Luigi Mangione was caught, and that he wanted to “get a cut” of the FBI reward if the other users turned him in.
According to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Robinson had spoken about Kirk’s visit to the university at a dinner with family members prior to the fatal attack, where they “talked about why they didn’t like him and the viewpoints that he had.”
Zinn was in jail for a year in 2013 for threatening multiple lives at the Salt Lake City Marathon
Image credits: DatFishGuy
Robinson, who is currently being held without bail at Utah County Jail, allegedly said that “Kirk was full of hate and spreading hate.”
“I hope they lock him up for obstruction,” one reader commented
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