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Topics: Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, Crime, Gun Crime, US News
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: Charlie Kirk, Tyler Robinson, Crime, Gun Crime, US News
A ballistics expert has explained one potential reason why the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk didn't match the rifle thought to have fired it.
Documents given to Tyler Robinson's lawyers reportedly share details of the bullet found in Charlie Kirk's autopsy and the rifle believed to have been used to kill the Turning Point USA founder.
Kirk was assassinated in Utah last year and Robinson later handed himself in to police.
The 22-year-old has since been charged with a series of crimes, the biggest being aggravated murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Robinson with this in mind.
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Robinson and his lawyers are due in court in May for his preliminary hearing. Ahead of this, prosecutors are said to have given his legal team thousands of pages of documentation to review.
As there's such a huge volume of files to get through, they've asked that the hearing be pushed back. One person suggested that it may take them as long as six months to get through it all.
In part of the files includes a report by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It states that experts struggled to link the bullet used to kill Kirk to the rifle Robinson allegedly used to carry out the murder. Reports have suggested that the rifle – a Mauser model 98 – was owned by Robinson's grandfather.
It's believed that his lawyers will use this evidence to try and clear Robinson's name.
Addressing the reports, Steven Howard, a ballistics expert, said that being unable to link a bullet to a gun isn't uncommon.
He explained to the Daily Mail: "Rifles have so much velocity and therefore so much energy, that the bullets a lot of times damage themselves to the point that you can't realistically match them up because they're so damaged."
Howard continued: "You can say, OK, it's from this type of weapon because it's got the right number of lands and grooves, and they're basically the right width, it's the right caliber.
"But after that, the bullet's so damaged you can't really line things up in a ballistic comparison microscope and match it."
Bullets shot from rifles carry more energy in comparison to handgun bullets, which can cause it to fragment upon impact with soft tissues, bones, and so on, according to Howard, thus making it even harder to identify.
With this in mind, he suggested that the bullet in question 'is damaged so much they can't conclusively match it'.
Robinson is next due in court on April 17 for a hearing about the defense's request to ban cameras from the courtroom.