- Tyler Robinson's preliminary hearing in Provo continues Wednesday with a half-day session.
- Robinson faces 10 charges including aggravated murder of activist Charlie Kirk.
- Surveillance videos and DNA evidence highlighted day two of the court proceedings.
PROVO — The third day of Tyler Robinson's preliminary hearing on Wednesday will be a half day due to a prior scheduling arrangement.
The hearing will start at 1 p.m. in 4th District Judge Tony Graf's courtroom. It will be livestreamed here:
Robinson faces 10 charges, the most serious being aggravated murder, in the shooting death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025. During a preliminary hearing, a judge will decide whether there is sufficient probable cause to go to trial on the charges levied against a defendant. The bar prosecutors must meet to show probable cause, however, is very low at a preliminary hearing. A judge will not determine guilt or innocence during a preliminary hearing.
Sgt. Jennifer Faumuina, with the State Bureau of Investigation, who oversaw the collection of evidence at UVU on Sept. 10, will likely be recalled to the witness stand first to resume her testimony. She briefly testified on Tuesday that she received a report from the FBI that a towel and screwdriver sent to Quanico for DNA testing had been linked to Robinson.
His defense attorneys, however, spent nearly three hours Tuesday trying to raise doubts about the reliability of that testing by calling the forensic examiner who authored the report, Amanda Bakker, to the witness stand.
Also on Tuesday, David Hull, the lead investigator in the Robinson case for the State Bureau of Investigation, testified about surveillance videos from the UVU campus allegedly showing Robinson's movements that day. Robinson was on the UVU campus four times from the morning of Sept. 10, 2025, until he drove away at about 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, Hull said. Surveillance videos of a man that Hull says is Robinson were shown to the courtroom, beginning with Robinson arriving in a parking garage at 8:30 a.m.
He visited the amphitheater where Kirk was scheduled to speak and returned to the parking garage by about 9:25 a.m. Just after 10 a.m., Robinson returned to UVU and is seen in surveillance video walking across Campus Drive to a wooded area, but this time with a backpack, Hull testified. After leaving campus again, Robinson later returned, this time wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and long pants. Surveillance video shows a man that Hull says he believes was Robinson walking with a limp or gait, with his right leg not bending, across campus.
At about 12:15 p.m., investigators believe Robinson got onto the roof of the Losee building. By 12:22 p.m., he is crawling to the edge of the rooftop. Kirk was killed at 12:23 p.m. Hull says video shows Robinson then getting up and running to the edge of the roof, dropping down and running back to the wooded area.
A police officer actually had contact with Robinson as he was driving away from campus about 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, Hull testified. Robinson was driving past a checkpoint on Campus Drive and 800 South and was stopped. The officer who talked to Robinson had a suspicious feeling about the driver and wrote down a partial plate number, which Hull says was later determined to match Robinson's vehicle.
Although the court acknowledged at the start of the day Robinson's standing objection to all hearsay evidence, his defense team specifically objected Tuesday to the video being shown in the court, saying they believe it "will play a big role in the trial" and could jeopardize their client's right to a fair trial by prejudicing a jury pool. Graf allowed the unedited version to be played once in court, but would not allow the state to show their edited version of the video in open court, which included zooming in on certain parts and red circles added by the editor to make it easier to see Robinson's movements.
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