Erika Kirk recalls harrowing moment she found out Charlie was shot — after she ‘didn’t get to give him a kiss’ that fateful morning

Erika Kirk recounted the earth-shattering moment she learned her husband, Charlie Kirk, had been shot, in her first interview since his assassination, during which she also lamented that she “didn’t get to give him a kiss” before he left home for the doomed event.

The 36-year-old widow of the late conservative activist, 31, was at her mother’s doctor’s appointment on Sept. 10 and had been monitoring the Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University on her phone when she received an unusual call from Michael McCoy, the chief of staff for the influential student group.

“I’ll never forget,” Kirk told Fox News host Jesse Watters. “I’m just being like, ‘Charlie’s been shot. He’s been shot. Get the kids. Get security. Get the kids. Get the kids. He’s been shot.’

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“I sprinted out of her treatment center, just collapsed in the middle of the parking lot, called our security,” she recalled. “Unbelievable nightmare.”

McCoy told “Jesse Watters Primetime” that it was “the first time I’ve ever called” Erika during a Turning Point USA campus tour stop.

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“I just remember it rang like three or four times. I didn’t know what to say. Those are the words that will change someone’s life forever, and you have to be the one to say it,” he said.

Erika further recalled that the morning of the assassination, Charlie had left their Arizona home very early in the morning to get to the event in Orem, Utah, and that she urged him to sleep in their daughter’s bedroom alone that night before.

“I said, ‘I want you to have a good night’s sleep. Go ahead and sleep in her room, and I’ll turn the air down so it’s nice and cozy in there … I just want you to get a good night’s sleep so you can be amazing tomorrow,’” she told Watters in the emotional sit-down.

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“And so Gigi and I stayed in our room, and that morning he woke up super early, and he came into our bedroom, into the bathroom, because that’s where his wedding ring was and his necklace, and he came in and he grabbed that and then he left. I didn’t get to give him a kiss,” Kirk revealed.

She would get her kiss later in the evening — as Charlie lay mortally wounded on a hospital bed.

Erika said she was advised by doctors and a police officer to wait until his body was taken to the mortuary to see him, but she refused.

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“I said, ‘With all due respect, sir, I want to see what they did to my husband, and I want to give him a kiss, because I didn’t get to give him a kiss this morning.”‘

Charlie was gunned down while headlining an event for TPUSA, the conservative activist organization he founded in 2012.

His alleged assassin, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, has been charged with first-degree murder and potentially faces death by firing squad if convicted.

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“I do not want this man’s blood on my ledger when I stand before the Lord,” Erika responded when asked if Robinson should receive the death penalty if convicted. “I want the government to decide. That’s biblical, too. 

“Justice will ultimately be served.”

The TPUSA founder was shot while answering a question about transgender gun violence, which Erika doesn’t believe was by happenstance. 

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” she told Watters. 

When asked about the horrific footage of Charlie’s assassination that was widely circulated on social media after the shooting, Erika indicated that she intends to never watch the videos. 

“I never saw the video. I never will see it. I never want to see it,” she said. “There’s certain things you see in your life that you can never unsee. There’s certain things you see in your life that mark your soul forever. I don’t want my husband’s public assassination to be something I ever see.” 

Erika Kirk, a former beauty queen and college basketball player, married Charlie in May 2021.

The couple had two children together, a 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

“It’s really sweet because I keep explaining to her a few things, and I said, ‘if you ever want to talk to daddy you just look up to the sky and start talking, and he can hear you,” Erika said of her young daughter.

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“I told her, ‘You know, daddy is in heaven’ — and she goes, ‘Do you think I could go sometime?’” Kirk said, wiping away tears.

“I said, ‘Baby, we will all go one day.’”

The grieving widow also revealed that she initially thought Charlie would survive the shooting — but realized he was mortally wounded once she saw him in the hospital.

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“We walked into that room, and he had this smirk on his face,” she said. “That smirk to me is that look of ‘you thought you stopped what I’ve built. You thought you could end this vision, this movement, this revival. You thought you could do that by murdering me.

“You got my body, but you didn’t get my soul.”

Erika Kirk was named president of Turning Point USA in the wake of her husband’s death.

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Last week, she spoke at her first campus event since the assassination of her husband.

Vice President JD Vance, who helped bring Charlie’s body back to Arizona after the tragedy in Utah, appeared onstage with Erika at the packed University of Mississippi rally and Q&A session – a hallmark of the late TPUSA founder’s events.

A Fox Nation documentary series, “This Is the Turning Point,” will air later Wednesday evening and feature behind-the-scenes footage of Erika Kirk as she assumed leadership of her husband’s influential organization.