Seattle paralegal falsely linked to Charlie Kirk shooting
- Published on September 12, 2025 at 22:34
- 4 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"A second suspect of Charlie Kirk's political assassination has been identified by Twitter users and yes, it's a transgender," says a September 10, 2025 post on X.
The post shares a photo of a transgender woman beside a screenshot of an X post from "@NajraGalvz" expressing hope that someone would "evaporate" Kirk during the Turning Point USA founder's Utah Valley University event.
Similar posts sharing the woman's image rocketed across social media, boosted by prominent X accounts that have promoted Russian disinformation and the QAnon conspiracy theory. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser who in 2017 pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, also amplified the claim.
Misinformation proliferates rapidly after major breaking news events, and transgender people have become a common scapegoat after US mass shootings.
But Michaela, who asked to be identified by her first name due to safety concerns, told AFP in a September 11 interview that she spent the day Kirk was assassinated in the state of Washington, where she lives and works as a paralegal.
The 29-year-old transgender woman said she has only been to Utah once, for an overnight stop in Moab while moving from Texas in May, and is not a student at Utah Valley University.
She shared screenshots with AFP of her bank transactions and iPhone location history that confirm she was in the state of Washington when Kirk was killed, as well as her driver's license placing her there.
Her roommate also corroborated her location in a September 11 message with AFP, calling the rumors spreading online "insane."
Following a multi-day manhunt, Utah Governor Spencer Cox on September 12 announced that authorities had captured a suspect, identified as Utah resident Tyler Robinson, 22, who he said was not a student at Utah Valley University. Mug shots of Robinson have been released, alongside prior photos posted by authorities showcasing him as a person of interest.
'Fits their narrative'
Michaela said her photo, which she uses as a profile picture on X and Instagram, appears to have been erroneously linked to Kirk's shooting because it was indexed in Google searches for the X user "@NajraGalvz," who posted about wanting someone to "evaporate" the activist during his Utah Valley University visit (archived here).
The user, who later changed their handle, had previously reshared one of Michaela's posts from September 9 (archived here).
Michaela told AFP she did not know the user and was not affiliated with their account.
In stories and posts on Instagram, she frantically sought to clarify that she was not a suspect and did not author the posts about Kirk's Utah event (archived here and here). She also contacted the FBI and reached out to other users spreading the misinformation about her, she said.
"People on the right wing, obviously they want a shooter, and a trans person fits their narrative," she said. "It's pretty surreal to see how quickly it happened."
She told AFP she became "really scared" as she was inundated with hate-filled messages and threats after her image circulated in posts that falsely named her as the shooter.
"I'm getting witch-hunted online," she said. "Some people want to enact vigilante justice on me."
In direct messages reviewed by AFP, several people threatened to kill her, often using explicit language or anti-LGBTQ slurs.
"You better watch out because we're coming for you," one message said.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Kirk shooting here, here and here.
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