When conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Sept. 10, 2025, he was the only person who died. But thousands of people in attendance that day at Utah Valley University bore witness to the violence.
Some of whom are seeking help from the state to pay for mental health and trauma support.
Utah Office for Victims of Crime Director Chyleen Richey said in the days following the shooting, at least 500 people who were present approached her office seeking compensation for things like mental health counseling. So far, 173 have actually applied for those benefits.
“What we have to determine is a zone of danger for our benefits,” she explained.
In other words, someone at the front of the crowd who saw everything that day might be entitled to different benefits than someone who was further back with an obstructed view. In this case, after working with the FBI, the office determined the zone of danger to be the rows closest to Kirk when he was shot.
Richey’s office worked with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, federal agencies, the Red Cross and victim advocates to identify those impacted. Beyond event attendees, Kirk’s death was unique in that it happened on camera, with hundreds of angles of the shooting appearing on social media and television minutes later. While her office does not minimize other experiences, Richey said there are “certain qualifications for eligibility to have benefits paid for.”
It can be difficult to determine how someone is impacted after they witness a violent crime. Utah code defines victims and secondary victims. A primary victim is someone who “suffers bodily or psychological injury or death” as a direct result of a crime, whereas a secondary victim is someone who is “traumatically affected.”
“We made the decision to qualify these people as primary victims,” Richey said. “So they get what other primary victims would get in any kind of crime, and that is 25 mental health sessions reimbursed.”
According to the Office for Victims of Crime dashboard, the agency received more than $24.4 million in state and federal funding in fiscal year 2025, and paid nearly $7 million to Utah crime victims. It’s unclear how much has been paid to those affected by the Kirk shooting, which happened in fiscal year 2026. Richey said some applicants have already received benefits. Mental health sessions vary in cost, but court records show one student recently filed a restitution claim for $105 for one therapy session.
James Densley, department chair of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Metro State University in Minnesota and deputy director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center, notes that “on paper, this is a case with one homicide victim.”
“I think in practice, what you actually have is thousands of people present on a campus of ten of thousands, so when we think about the victimology, it goes just beyond the immediate event itself.”
Densely’s research is extensive on public violence with multiple victims. He said numerous factors set the Kirk shooting apart from other similar events. Chief among them is the global attention it received on mainstream media and social media platforms. Because of that publicity, victims are almost forced to constantly re-live the event. The political undertones of the crime are another.
“The people who were traumatized that day then have to watch strangers online fight about whether the death mattered or not, and that ordinary mourning that we would do doesn't work in those conditions,” he said.
Densley believes the mental health impact of the shooting may take a while to fully reveal itself, especially considering the demographics of many of Kirk’s fans.
“This was a crowd that skewed conservative, and it skewed male, and if you look at a lot of research, these are the groups that are less likely to say out loud that they're struggling,” he said.
When he weighs the unique factors that apply to Kirk’s shooting, he believes the people who have approached Richey and her office likely make up a small percentage compared to the real number who may need the benefits.
“I think that that number is not a measure of the extent of the harm,” he said. “It's really just a measure of those who've been able to navigate the legal system to file a claim.”
In the case against the man accused of shooting Kirk, Tyler Robinson, victimology is an emerging talking point. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted. On Aug. 12, the defense argued for the death penalty to be taken off the table because they claim the bullet “hit the intended target,” and no one else was endangered.
That could prove to be a key issue in the case against Robinson. In the charges filed against him, prosecutors claim other people could have been harmed by his actions and cite that as an aggravating factor that makes Kirk's killing a capital crime.
Robinson has yet to enter a plea to the charges, which include aggravated murder and six other counts. A hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to move the case to trial is set for Sept. 1.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
