(RNS) — Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and social media personality who rallied young Americans to Donald Trump’s MAGA cause, has died at age 31.

The founder of Turning Point USA and host of the streaming Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk was shot while speaking to a crowd of students at an outdoor stadium at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday (Sept. 10).

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” President Trump announced on Truth Social, his social media platform. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”

A native of Arlington Heights, Illinois, near Chicago, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA as an 18-year-old in 2012 with a Tea Party conservative, William Montgomery, who died in 2020. The conservative nonprofit sought to educate students about “the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets and capitalism.”

With the help of Montgomery, a retired businessman who encouraged Kirk to get involved in politics after hearing him speak at a high school event, the organization grew into a conservative powerhouse. Within three years it had 800 chapters on college and high school campuses around the country.

“There are young conservatives out there, and there have been for decades. But I just feel they haven’t been plugged in correctly,” Kirk told the Atlantic in 2015, as the organization was gaining national attention. They haven’t been cultivated, they haven’t been properly equipped or trained.”

Trump’s election in 2016 cemented Kirk as a major power in conservative circles, and his influence continued to grow after Trump’s 2020 defeat through his 2024 comeback.

In recent years, he started Turning Point Faith to rally pastors and other Christian leaders to Trump’s cause and began speaking openly about his faith, especially during monthly Freedom Night in America rallies at Dream City Church in Phoenix.

Not long before the Utah Valley event, Kirk’s wife, Ericka Lane Frantzve, posted a Bible verse online, according to Fox News, quoting from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Rev. Rob McCoy ,who helped Kirk in organizing Turning Point Faith, told Religion News Service that he met the young activist during a conservative radio convention. The two hit it off and became friends.

“My church was the very first church he was invited to speak at,” McCoy told RNS during a June 2023 interview. “He didn’t think any church would want him.”

He said Kirk would engage with folks who disagreed with him during speaking events. “But that’s what I love about Charlie. Whenever he speaks, at a university, he has the folks that are in disagreement — they get to go to the front line,” he told RNS.

In 2022, Kirk spoke at breakfast for politically conservative pastors during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California. There he warned that liberal political causes like Black Lives Matter were invading churches. “Our beautiful faith is under attack from within,” he said.

Kirk, who grew up Presbyterian, urged Baptist leaders in the room to set aside their theological differences to focus on saving the country from liberals.

“If we don’t recognize that we all have to agree on liberty and the gospel, we’re all going to be sharing our theological disputes in prison,” he said.

He is survived by his wife and two children.