Moments after the governor of Utah ended his press conference, where he named the man accused of shooting and killing far-right conservative Charlie Kirk, NBC journalist Brandy Zadrozny was asked to interpret the meaning of the words written on the bullet casings found near the crime scene.
Among the writings attributed to alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was, “Hey, fascist! Catch," "If you read this, you are gay, lmao," and "Oh, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao," with another being inscribed with a series of arrows.
MSNBC host Anna Cabrera asked for clarification, which led Zadrozny to describe the words and symbols as “internet speak” popular with people Robinson’s age.
“It's hard to say when someone is speaking in internet speak, whether they're being truly that's what they mean or whether they're trolling or whether they're sort of pretending to be something else,” she explained. “So all this, with a grain of salt, but the bullet casings –– one of the engravings was ‘Notices, bulges what's this?’ Again that's an internet joke, it's a meme, it's about, you know, gay trans people. So that is probably what the Wall Street Journal reporting, saying that they had pro-trans messaging was probably about.”
“And then it said, ‘Hey, fascist catch,’ and then it had some up-down arrows and that is from a video game that it's for an attack, that means like total destruction,” she added. “There was another ‘Bella Ciao,’ which is an anti-fascist anthem. And then ‘If you read this, you are gay, lmao,’ which you know, laughing my ass off.”
“So again, it's hard to say what it means so far,” she conceded. “They [authorities] said you know, come to your own conclusions and I think you kind of can. But for the moment, we just have to be very, very careful. So all that we know again, Robinson, we haven't found any of his internet profiles. He was on Discord, which again, he's 20-something years old. This is a child of the internet, he's on the internet. He's clearly of the internet. But where he existed on the internet, we just don't know yet.”
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