The family of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has filed a formal notice of claim against Utah Valley University, the school's police chief, and state officials, alleging that a preventable chain of security failures left Kirk defenseless before a rooftop shooter who killed him last September.
The filing, dated September 9, 2026, one day before the first anniversary of Kirk's death, names Utah Valley University, its police department, campus police Chief Jeffrey Long, former UVU President Astrid Tuminez, and the State of Utah as respondents. Addressed to the Utah Office of the Attorney General, the notice is a required legal step before a formal wrongful death lawsuit can proceed under state law. Breitbart News first reported the family's intent to sue, publishing details from the claim.
Kirk was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while speaking at an outdoor Turning Point USA "American Comeback Tour" event on the UVU campus in Orem, Utah. AP News reported that the shooter fired from a rooftop more than 400 feet away, striking Kirk in the neck in front of roughly 3,000 people. Tyler Robinson, the named suspect, has been charged with aggravated murder and faces a potential death penalty. A judge has ordered the case to proceed toward trial.
The Kirk family's notice lays out six specific allegations of negligence, and the documented details paint a picture of a university that treated a high-profile, politically controversial outdoor event with the security posture of a campus cookout.
At the center of the family's case is a text message exchange between TPUSA staff and Chief Long before the event. A staff member relayed a warning from a student group:
"Hello Chief Long, we received this message today from the student group.... 'there is student roof access pretty close to where [Charlie Kirk] will be set up at Utah Valley.'"
The staffer continued:
"If this is true, it would be nice to either have it controlled access or allow one of my guys to be there as well. If Possible."
Long's reply, in full: "I got you covered."
He did not. Surveillance footage shown at Robinson's preliminary hearing captured someone running across the roof of the Losee Center, a campus building near the event, to a position a police officer later described as a "sniper's pad." The notice alleges UVU never secured the rooftops, never monitored surveillance cameras in real time, and never followed through on the chief's assurance.
The filing states that UVU assigned just six campus police officers to the outdoor event. The New York Post reported that figure represented only 25 percent of the university's police force. There was no drone surveillance, no coordination with local law enforcement agencies, no bag checks, no metal detectors, and no immediate first responders stationed on site.
The notice puts it bluntly:
"It is clear that the UVU Parties did not conduct a meaningful risk assessment before approving the outdoor location."
UVU, the filing adds, "did not have a written security plan for the Tour event."
A central thread in the notice is that UVU, not Turning Point USA, had exclusive authority over campus security decisions. TPUSA could request measures. Only the university could implement them.
The filing states:
"The UVU Parties, not TPUSA, had the power and authority to block walkways or cordon off a part of campus and limit access, excluding other students and the public to create a safe event."
The university could even have relocated the event indoors, the notice argues. Instead, UVU approved an outdoor venue in a campus quad surrounded by tall buildings and elevated platforms. The Kirk family's legal team described the setup in stark terms, calling it the equivalent of Kirk "walking into a fishbowl."
The notice enumerates six specific failures: UVU's failure to grasp the significance of Kirk's visit; its decision to permit an outdoor venue without adequate security resources; the assignment of only six officers to an event drawing thousands; the university's failure to exercise its exclusive power to protect Kirk; the ignored rooftop-access tip; and, finally, the conclusion that UVU's "omissions, actions and misconduct led to Mr. Kirk's death."
The filing drives home one comparison the family's lawyers clearly want a jury to remember. Just over a year before Kirk's assassination, a rooftop shooter attempted to kill President Trump, Kirk's close friend and political ally, at a rally in Pennsylvania. The Secret Service security failures in that incident drew intense national scrutiny and congressional investigation.
The notice states:
"The risk of a rooftop shooter should have been especially top-of-mind given the attempted assassination of President Trump, Charlie Kirk's close friend and political ally, by a rooftop shooter the previous year."
Kirk's family argues that the death threats Kirk regularly received were "publicly known and reported on well before" he ever set foot on UVU's campus. His "outsized public influence came with costs and risks," the filing states, risks UVU was obligated to account for and did not.
The notice describes Kirk as "a once-in-a-lifetime public and political figure" who built the largest conservative campus and youth activist organization in America "in just under a decade." His social media reach was vast. His political profile was rising. And the university that hosted him, the family contends, treated the event as routine.
Attorney D. Loren Washburn, representing the Kirk family, framed the case around the distance between what UVU pledged and what UVU delivered. The notice argues that standard security practices used by other universities hosting controversial speakers, practices the filing says are well established, were simply absent at UVU on September 10, 2025.
Washburn stated:
"Tragically, the UVU Parties took none of these safety measures, steps only they had the authority to take, resulting in a situation that rendered Mr. Kirk helpless before his assassin."
The notice adds that had UVU monitored its own surveillance footage in real time, "Kirk's tragic death could have been avoided." Cameras captured movement on the Losee Center roof. No one was watching.
No security briefing addressed the rooftop risk before the event, despite the fact that the danger "had been identified and communicated to Chief Long," the filing states.
The notice lists prospective plaintiffs as the Estate of Charles Kirk, Erika Kirk, two minor children identified as G.K. and M.K., and Kirk's parents, Robert and Kathryn Kirk. The filing leaves open the possibility that additional family members or parties may join the suit.
Neither UVU, Chief Long, Astrid Tuminez, nor the State of Utah has publicly responded to the notice of claim. The Washington Examiner noted that law enforcement officials held a press briefing shortly after the shooting last year, but the university's institutional response to the family's legal action remains unclear.
The criminal case against Tyler Robinson, meanwhile, continues to move forward. Robinson faces aggravated murder charges and a potential death sentence. His preliminary hearing has already taken place, and the case has been ordered to trial.
The security failures were not the only institutional disgrace to follow Kirk's death. The Washington Free Beacon reported that University of Michigan professor Charles H.F. Davis III publicly celebrated Kirk's assassination, calling it a "solution" and declaring Kirk "should not be mourned or celebrated." Davis has received more than $750,000 in research funding from institutions including the Gates Foundation and Harvard University. The University of Michigan declined to condemn his remarks, citing its institutional neutrality policy.
That a tenured professor, bankrolled by some of the most prominent names in philanthropy and higher education, could openly cheer a man's murder and face no institutional consequence tells its own story about the culture Kirk spent his career challenging.
The Kirk family's notice of claim lays out a damning sequence: a specific warning delivered, a promise made, a promise broken, cameras rolling with no one watching, and a young father shot in front of thousands. Every failure the family identifies was within UVU's power to prevent. The question now is whether a court will hold the university accountable for choosing not to.
Charlie Kirk built an organization to hold institutions to account. His family is now asking the legal system to do the same, and the facts in this filing suggest the university has a great deal to answer for.
