Day one of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing on July 6, 2026, largely centered on prosecutors beginning to construct a timeline of Charlie Kirk’s killing at Utah Valley University and establishing the authenticity of the surveillance footage and investigative records they intended to use against Robinson. Former UVU police officer Chris Bagley described the moment the gunshot rang out during Kirk’s September 10, 2025 event and the chaos that followed, while Utah State Bureau of Investigation agent David Hull walked the court through the enormous video-review effort undertaken after the shooting. Hull testified that investigators examined hundreds of hours of surveillance footage and ultimately tracked a person they believed was Robinson moving around the UVU campus at several different points that day. Prosecutors introduced surveillance recordings from multiple locations as they attempted to connect the person seen approaching the campus, moving toward the area surrounding the Losee Center, and later leaving the area to Robinson. Three separate videos depicting Kirk being shot were admitted, although Judge Tony Graf determined that their graphic nature warranted restricting their display to the attorneys’ and judge’s monitors rather than broadcasting them throughout the courtroom. Kirk’s widow, Erika, and his parents left the courtroom while the videos were reviewed. Prosecutors also introduced Kirk’s autopsy report through Hull, which listed his cause of death as a gunshot wound to the neck and the manner of death as homicide
The defense spent much of the first day attacking the manner in which the prosecution was getting its evidence into the record rather than attempting to disprove the entire prosecution theory at that stage. Kathryn Nester and Robinson’s attorneys repeatedly raised hearsay, foundation and authentication objections, arguing that investigators were being permitted to introduce reports, statements and records created by other people without those individuals appearing personally to testify. Judge Graf overruled most of those objections, reflecting the substantially lower evidentiary threshold governing a Utah preliminary hearing, whose purpose was only to determine whether probable cause existed to send Robinson to trial rather than whether prosecutors could prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. One significant exception involved an edited compilation of surveillance footage, which Graf declined to admit in that form and required prosecutors to replace with the underlying unedited material. Hull’s testimony also revealed the scope of the prosecution’s surveillance theory: investigators claimed Robinson had appeared on or around the UVU campus multiple times on September 10 and that they were attempting to stitch those appearances together into a continuous identification of the alleged shooter. By the end of day one, prosecutors had established the killing itself, the medical cause of Kirk’s death, the existence and authenticity of substantial video evidence and the beginnings of their effort to identify Robinson as the person captured in that footage. They had not yet presented many of the pieces expected to become more consequential later in the hearing, including the rifle and DNA evidence, Robinson’s alleged communications and admissions, and testimony concerning his roommate Lance Twiggs.
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