Sculptor Sergio Furnari, who says he spent roughly $100,000 of his own money on the work, uncovered the statue at 2:23 p.m. on September 10 — the same minute investigators say Kirk was shot from a rooftop more than 400 feet away while addressing a crowd of about 3,000 people at that hour one year earlier. The piece, displayed unpermitted on the back of a pickup truck, was gone from the square within minutes of the unveiling, hauled away as the crowd swelled and tempers rose.
The statue was one of several tributes marking the anniversary. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared September 10 "Charlie Kirk Day" in the state where Kirk was killed. Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, held its own memorial back at Utah Valley University, with Glenn Beck, Frank Turek and other speakers honoring his life and his advocacy for open debate on college campuses. At the Republican Party's midterm convention that same week, delegates broke into chants of "Charlie, Charlie" as President Trump spoke of him.
The legal case tied to Kirk's death also moved forward this month. On September 1, Utah 4th District Judge Tony Graf ruled that Tyler Robinson, the man accused of the shooting, will stand trial on aggravated murder and four other counts, including felony discharge of a firearm and witness tampering. Prosecutors allege Robinson fired from a rooftop knowing the shot could have struck bystanders in the crowd below, a factor the judge cited in keeping the death penalty on the table. Robinson pleaded not guilty to all charges. He has not been convicted, and what a jury will ultimately decide remains ahead.
What a Statue Cannot Hold
A bronze statue can catch a man's likeness, but it cannot catch what he actually believed. Charlie Kirk said, not many months before he died, that he wanted his legacy to be his faith — not his politics, not his following, not the size of the crowds he drew, but the plain fact that he had staked his life on Jesus Christ. He was known for arguing sharp and hard, but under the argument was a man who read his Bible and said so, who told young people that the mountains of this culture — family, church, school, media, business, government — belong to the Lord and are worth contending for.
My friend, a man does not get to choose the manner of his death, but he does get to choose what he has given his life to before it comes. That is the question Times Square cannot answer, and neither can a courtroom in Provo. A trial will weigh evidence and a jury will render a verdict, and that is right — justice belongs on this earth, and government does not bear the sword in vain. But whatever a jury decides, it will not settle the deeper account. Vengeance and recompense belong to a higher bench than any in Utah.
"Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints." (Psalm 116:15)
That is a strange verse to read over a killing. Death does not look precious. It looks like a bullet from a rooftop, a family without a father, a widow standing at a lectern where her husband used to stand. But the Lord does not measure a life the way Times Square measures one, by the size of the crowd or the height of the statue. He measures it by whom a man belonged to when the shot was fired.
Jesus told His own followers plainly not to be afraid of the ones who can kill the body but cannot touch the soul. That word was not decoration. It was preparation. Every man who has ever stood up in public and said "I believe this is true" has stood a little closer to that danger than the men who said nothing at all. The comfortable path is silence. The costly path is conviction spoken out loud, and history is not kind to the ones who choose it.
"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to kill both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)
A statue rusts. A pickup truck drives it away. But a soul does not come down off the back of a flatbed — it goes somewhere, and it answers to Someone. That is the whole of the matter, for the man in Times Square and for the man reading this now. What have you staked your life on, before the day comes when it is asked of you?