‘Am I going to die today?’ — Witness describes UVU shooting that killed Charlie Kirk

OREM, Utah (ABC4) — A witness who was only about 20 feet away from Charlie Kirk when he was shot and killed shared her traumatizing experience, sharing that at first, she thought it was a prank and that she feared for her life.

Charlie Kirk was a conservative influencer and co-founder of Turning Point USA. He was appearing at UVU as part of his American Comeback Tour earlier Wednesday, September 10. The event was hosted by the UVU chapter of Turning Point USA. At around 12:20 p.m., a single shot rang out, and Kirk was shot and killed.

Leland Osterhout was at the event, and she told ABC4.com that she was the second person back from the barricade, about 20 feet from Kirk. “We were eight minutes into the Q&A when he got shot,” she stated. She said that Kirk was answering the second question from the crowd, about preventing mass shootings.

The question was about if Kirk supported a ban on transgender people owning guns, Leland said, and Kirk was talking about how he did support a ban. “Just at that moment, he got shot, and all hell broke loose,” she stated.

Immediately after the shooting happened, Leland couldn’t believe it was real. “I was like, ‘Are they pulling a prank on us?’ There was so much blood that came out that it was like, this has to be fake… And so it was just surreal.”

Leland said that the image of Kirk being shot is burned into her mind, as he fell to the side out of his chair.

She said that at first, everyone in the crowd started looking around. “It probably took a good maybe three seconds for everybody to realize that it was real and actually start ducking,” Leland said. “And then, I don’t know who it was, but people just started screaming and telling us to run, run, run.”

“My first thought was, ‘am I going to die today?’ You know, is my husband going to die today? We got married a month ago, and that’s a scary thing,” she said.

There was a bottleneck of people trying to get out because of the barricades, and by the exit, there was a water feature. “There were so many people trying to get out at the same time that my husband just said, ‘okay, Leland, get in the water. You’re fine, you’ll dry off.’ And so we both jumped in the water, it probably went to mid-thigh on me, and we got the heck out of there,” Leland recounted.

Leland’s brother Ashton used to work at Turning Point USA, and he took to the streets of Orem holding a handmade sign that said, “RIP Charlie.”

“I was mortified,” Ashton told ABC4.com. He said that he’s out there holding the sign so that people can know what happened to Kirk. “A lot of people, they just drive by, and they don’t notice a single thing, and I just want them to at least know that something is happening so they can look at their social media or something.”

“I thought in America at least you were free to have an opinion, and now…” Ashton said, shaking his head. “Now you’re gonna get killed for having an opinion. That’s all he did, was just debate.”

“I’ve been crying all night,” Leland said. “I can’t imagine what his wife Erica’s going through, what his kids are going through, and not only losing your husband in a horrible way like this, but also having it televised everywhere, and having actual video on the internet everywhere.”

Leland said she hopes that the shooter is brought to justice. “To have this happen in Utah of all places is incredibly shocking,” she said.