Federal law enforcement officials disputed a report about engraved messages allegedly found on ammunition inside the rifle believed to have been used to kill Charlie Kirk.
The Wall Street Journalreported that a preliminary internal report and a source familiar with the investigation said ammunition recovered with the .30-caliber hunting rifle appeared to be engraved with what was statements expressing so-called "transgender and anti-fascist ideology," but a senior law enforcement official told the New York Times that might not be accurate.
"A senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that [WSJ] report had not been verified by A.T.F. analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted," the Times reported. "In fast-moving investigations, such status reports are not made public because they often contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information."
Authorities released two still images of a person of interest recorded on the Utah Valley University campus just before the 31-year-old Kirk was shot and killed during a speaking event.
"The grainy images show a man in a stairwell wearing a black shirt, a baseball cap and dark sunglasses," the Times reported. "The authorities have described him as a person of interest. State and federal officials also said they had found a bolt-action rifle used in the attack, as well as imprints of a forearm, a palm and a shoe."
The apparently white man appears to be around college age, which investigators said allowed him to blend in with students, and authorities said he jumped from a roof after firing a single shot that killed Kirk, fled through a wooded area to a nearby neighborhood and then disappeared.
"Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, congratulated officials for taking into custody 'the subject for the horrific shooting' on Wednesday," the Times reported. "He was forced to backtrack on social media after the person was cleared and released. The reversal was a source of significant embarrassment for the F.B.I. director on a day when three former agents filed a lawsuit portraying him as a partisan neophyte."