“This is everywhere. Every community, every town, every state,” one of the suspect’s neighbors said. “It’s going to be everybody’s neighbor, everybody’s classmate. It’s not at all unusual anymore.”
The arrest of Tyler Robinson sent shockwaves through the small community where his family lives. Washington, a city of around 30,000, sits next to St. George in Utah’s southwest corner. It’s a 3 ½-hour drive from the Utah Valley University campus.
The 22-year-old is the suspect in the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk during an event at the campus in Orem. After a 33-hour manhunt, Robinson’s family helped turn him in.
On the morning of Sept. 12, after law enforcement released Robinson’s name, officers from the Washington City Police and Washington County Sheriff’s Office patrolled a quiet street, preventing onlookers from approaching the family’s two-story gray stucco home.
Neighbor Kristin Schwiermann still couldn’t believe the news as she walked by.
“It was a shock that it was him”, she says, “I feel sorry for his mother and his dad, because that’s not how they raised him.”
Schwiermann has lived a couple of houses down from the Robinsons for 16 years and has known the suspect since he was a little boy. She got to know the family when Tyler and his siblings attended the elementary school where she works.
“I really wanted them to find out who it was. This is not who I wanted it to be”, she says.
The Robinsons and Schwiermann had been part of the same local church, which, like most in this community, belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She hadn’t seen the family at church much recently, though.
Another neighbor, Melissa Tait, says it was a surprise to see her community connected with the shooting. But she believes it says more about the broader rising violence issues facing the country than it does about southwest Utah.
