OREM, UT—As law enforcement officials search for a person of interest in the assassination of 31-year-old Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, witnesses on the scene at Utah Valley University admitted Thursday they had assumed the shooter was just an ordinary gunman on campus.

“When that first shot rang out, we all figured it was going to be a run-of-the-mill mass shooting” said UVU junior Michael Tompkins, who explained that when students spotted a man clad in black and carrying a rifle on a roof overlooking the crowd, they had no reason to suspect anything unusual.

“It’s chilling that a person we thought was a normal, unhinged campus shooter was actually a political assassin. You see a deranged guy with a rifle on the quad every day. I suppose it was a little suspicious that he wasn’t shooting droves of students.” At press time, the FBI announced that the gunman had escaped by blending into the heavily armed crowd.