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Screwdriver: "Near the Rifle," Then the Roof

The screwdriver entered the public record in the woods, on the ground, beside the dumped rifle. That is where CNN placed it on September 11, 2025, the morning after the shooting, on live television. Four days later the same tool was described on the Losee Center roof, tied to DNA, and it is the roof version that stuck. This page preserves the broadcasts themselves — two clips, the original reporting in the reporters' own voices — so the earlier location is not something a reader has to take on trust. The second clip goes further: it catches both locations coming out of the same correspondent's mouth in one passage.

CNN broadcast, September 11, 2025. Correspondent Evan Perez describes the rifle thrown down as the suspect ran, a towel, and a screwdriver at the same location. Clip as circulated by @ProjectConstitu on X, September 4, 2026, crediting @p0etiC_njUstiCe.

What the September 11 broadcast says​

The clip runs 54 seconds. It is transcribed in full on this site — the relevant passage is a CNN anchor handing off to justice correspondent Evan Perez, who is adding to a colleague's description of the recovery scene in the wooded area near the building:

Now, Nick described that they found the bolt action rifle near that building, not far from that building. It appears, investigators believe that the suspect ran away from the scene threw the rifle down. There was a towel there, and they also found a screwdriver, which they believe indicates that perhaps the suspect used it to disassemble take the stock off, the rifle, to try to conceal it, right? That is a very common thing.

— Evan Perez, CNN, September 11, 2025. Machine transcription of the clip above; the full 54-second transcript is reproduced at the bottom of this page.

Three things are stated there and they hang together as one account: the rifle was thrown down on the ground in the woods, a towel was with it, and a screwdriver was with it — and the screwdriver's purpose is explained as taking the stock off the rifle after the shot, to conceal it while fleeing. That is a coherent story about a tool used at the end of the sequence, at the abandonment site.

The second clip — the switch happening inside CNN's own coverage​

A longer 2 minute 34 second compilation of the same CNN coverage, circulated on September 4, 2026 by Stew Peters, carries the story further than the 54-second cut above. It contains three segments, and by the end of it the screwdriver has moved — without anyone on air acknowledging that it moved.

CNN compilation, 2:34. Evan Perez places the screwdriver in the woods; the anchor repeats “right near the rifle” to Andrew McCabe; a later Perez segment says the DNA screwdriver “was found on the rooftop.” Source: @realstewpeters on X, September 4, 2026.

Segment 1 — the woods, again​

The compilation opens with the same Evan Perez hit as the clip above: the rifle thrown down, the towel, the screwdriver, and the explanation that it was used to take the stock off "to try to conceal it." The correspondent on scene is named as Nick Watt, reporting from Orem, Utah.

Segment 2 — the anchor states it to a former FBI deputy director​

The anchor then turns to Andrew McCabe, introduced as former FBI deputy director and CNN senior law enforcement analyst, and states the location as established fact:

We also learn, Andy, that authorities recovered a screwdriver, right near the rifle, they found. Investigators say that's an indication that the shooter may have used it to disassemble and then reassemble the firearm before using it. What does that tell you? Why would he need a screwdriver?

This is the line the earlier @ProjectConstitu post attributed to Pamela Brown. Whoever is speaking, it is on tape, and it is the network's own framing rather than one correspondent's phrasing — "right near the rifle" is being handed to an expert guest as a settled fact to analyze.

McCabe's answer matters because it shows what the woods location was doing in the story at that moment:

One of the questions that I've had since yesterday, until we recently found out that they recovered the rifle, is, how does this shooter get out of that location? Just get off the roof — had to have been a large shoulder-fired weapon. Well, with the screwdriver, we maybe now have an answer to that question. There are — you can disassemble many weapons with very rudimentary, simple tools, like screwdrivers and things like that.

On September 11 the screwdriver was being used to explain the escape — how a large rifle left the roof. It was not being used to explain the arrival. That reading only works if the tool was found where the rifle was abandoned.

Segment 3 — "found on the rooftop"​

Later in the compilation Evan Perez returns with DNA results, and in the space of a few sentences the location changes:

One of the interesting things that we were told that the investigators found is, you know, they found a screwdriver. They are near this firearm, right? I can report today that the DNA hits from the towel that was wrapped around the firearm, and the DNA on the screwdriver are positively processed for the suspect in custody. We have the DNA on the screwdriver that was found on the rooftop, and the towel that the firearm was wrapped in.

Both descriptions are in the same passage, from the same reporter. He restates the original woodland framing — "they are near this firearm" — and then, one sentence later, attaches the DNA result to a screwdriver "found on the rooftop." No correction is offered and no explanation is given for the change.

What this second clip does and does not establish​

It does establish, from primary video rather than from a summary of it, that:

  • CNN stated the woodland location more than once and at more than one level — correspondent and anchor.
  • The woodland location was load-bearing in the on-air analysis, used by a former FBI deputy director to answer how the weapon left the roof.
  • The roof location and the woodland location were both voiced by the same correspondent, in the same passage, without a stated correction.

It does not establish when each segment aired. The clip is a compilation and the segments are not individually date-stamped in it; the DNA-results segment must be later than September 11 because those results did not exist that morning. It also does not establish that anyone knowingly said anything false. A reporter reading updated notes on air can carry an old phrase and a new fact in the same breath — that is an ordinary broadcast error, and it is the most likely explanation for a single passage containing both.

What it removes is the option of treating the woodland location as a one-off misstatement by one person on one morning. It was said repeatedly, relied on analytically, and then replaced silently.

Then the location changed​

On September 15, 2025, four days later, FBI Director Kash Patel described the screwdriver on Fox News as having been recovered on the roof, with DNA tied to it. That is the version that entered the case and the version the public now knows. The September 16 charging documents reportedly omitted the screwdriver altogether — see Court Testimony, which already tracks this description shift as an open discrepancy.

The roof account was later given under oath. Former UVU campus officer Chris Bagley reportedly testified at the July 2026 preliminary hearing that he reached the Losee Center roof around 12:44 p.m., roughly 21 minutes after the shot, and found a red-and-black screwdriver and disturbed gravel there. He is reported to have placed it approximately 10 to 15 feet inside the guardrail.

Why the switch is the point​

A screwdriver in the woods next to a dumped rifle and a screwdriver on the sniper roof are not the same piece of evidence, and they do not do the same work in the case:

  • In the woods, it is a disposal tool. It says nothing about who was on the roof. It is consistent with the flight path and with the rifle-and-towel bundle. It carries no rooftop-presence implication at all.
  • On the roof, it becomes a presence-and-assembly tool. Combined with DNA it is used to put a specific person at the firing position and to explain how a rifle got up there in a bag. That is a far heavier evidentiary load.

The move from the first to the second is a move from a neutral item to a load-bearing one, and it happened in four days with no public explanation of the correction.

The documentation gap around the roof version​

The problem researchers keep returning to is that the roof discovery is the version with no video.

  • Bagley's body camera stopped recording — he reportedly testified it cut out, he believed the battery died, as he arrived on the roof and before the gravel, the perch, or the screwdriver were filmed. He reportedly said he never went back to swap the battery because the scene was too chaotic.
  • The Losee rooftop CCTV footage released by Candace Owens does not, according to the citizen investigators who have reviewed it, show the rooftop figure producing a screwdriver or assembling a rifle on camera.
  • DNA on the item is a mixture, reportedly featuring Lance Twiggs as well — see Hearing Witnesses.

So the location that is now in the case rests on an officer's recollection months later, at a moment that the camera did not capture. The location that was dropped is the one that happens to be on tape — the CNN broadcast above.

The ordinary explanation, stated fairly​

Early reporting in a mass-casualty event is frequently wrong, and it is corrected. Scenes are processed over days; a reporter working from a live law-enforcement briefing can conflate two recovery locations; "near the rifle" may have been a briefing shorthand that nobody bothered to walk back publicly because the correction was routine. None of that requires anyone to have fabricated anything, and nothing here establishes that anyone did.

What the ordinary explanation does not do is make the record whole. A correction leaves a trail — an amended briefing, an evidence log entry, a tag showing where the item was first recovered. Those documents exist and they have not been released.

What would settle it​

Three specific items would close this question in an afternoon:

  1. The original evidence log showing where the screwdriver was first tagged and by whom.
  2. The complete Bagley body-camera file, including the device power and recording logs, which would show whether a battery actually died at that minute.
  3. The uncut Losee rooftop CCTV, rather than released excerpts.

Until then, the September 11 account and the September 15 account cannot both describe the same recovery. Tyler Robinson is charged, not convicted, and is presumed innocent; every person named on this page is described only by what they reportedly said or testified, and no claim of wrongdoing by any of them is made or implied here.

Full transcripts​

Clip 1 — the 54-second segment​

Machine transcription (Apple SpeechAnalyzer) of the 54-second CNN segment embedded at the top of this page, reproduced in full and unedited so the context around the screwdriver line is visible:

I want to go to Evan Perez now, who has some new reporting. Well, yeah, so Nick was just describing some of the scene there, and what was recovered by investigators, and we have a couple of bits of more information about what they found. Now, Nick described that they found the bolt action rifle near that building, not far from that building. It appears, investigators believe that the suspect ran away from the scene threw the rifle down. There was a towel there, and they also found a screwdriver, which they believe indicates that perhaps the suspect used it to disassemble take the stock off, the rifle, to try to conceal it, right? That is a very common thing. We've seen this done in other instances, for instance, the shooter in Butler, the one who shot at President Trump, tried to assassinate President Trump.

The clip ends there. Update: when this page was first written, the anchor line — that authorities recovered the screwdriver "right near the rifle they found" — was recorded here only as an attributed claim, because it is not in these 54 seconds. The second clip below contains it, spoken on air to Andrew McCabe, so it is no longer an unverified attribution. The New York Magazine and Telegraph attributions remain claims from the @ProjectConstitu post and are still not sourced to primary material on this page.

Clip 2 — the 2:34 compilation​

Machine transcription (Apple SpeechAnalyzer) of the Stew Peters compilation, reproduced in full and unedited. Speaker labels are not in the source audio, so the run-together text below is exactly what the transcriber produced; the segment breakdown above identifies who is speaking where. Obvious transcription artifacts are left in place rather than corrected — "Orm, Utah" is Orem, Utah:

So I want to go to Evan Perez now who has some new reporting. Well, yeah, so Nick was just describing some of the scene there, and what was recovered by investigators, and we have a couple of bits of more information about what they found. Now, Nick described that they found the bolt action rifle near that building, not far from that building, it appears, investigators believe that the suspect ran away from the scene threw the rifle down. There was a towel there, and they also found a screwdriver, which, they believe, indicates that perhaps the suspect used it to disassemble stock off the rifle, to try to conceal it, right? That is a very common thing. We've seen this done in other instances. For instance, the shooter in Butler, the one who shot at President Trump, tried to assassinate President Trump. Back to you. All right, Nick Watt, on the scene in Orm, Utah, thank you. And we're continuing our special coverage for more on the investigation into this killing. And the manhunt for the shooter, I want to bring in former FBI deputy director and CNN senior law enforcement analyst, Andrew McCabe, Andrew, thanks very much for joining us. We also learn, Andy, that authorities recovered a screwdriver, right near the rifle, they found investigators say that's an indication that the shooter may have used it to disassemble and then reassemble the firearm before using it. What does that tell you? Why would he need a screwdriver? Well, you know, one of the questions that I've had since yesterday, until we recently found out that they recovered the rifle, is, how does this shooter get out of that location? Just get off the roof had to have been a large shoulder fired weapon? Well, with the screwdriver, we maybe now have an answer to that question. Do you, there are, you can disassemble many weapons with very rudimentary, simple tools, like screwdrivers and things like that. Soon as Evan Perez joins us now with the latest details on the investigation. Evan, what are you learning? One of the interesting things that we were told that the investigators found is, you know, they found a screwdriver. They are near this firearm, right? I can report today that the DNA hits from the towel that was wrapped around the firearm, and the DNA on the screwdriver are positively processed for the suspect in custody. We have the DNA on the screwdriver that was found on the rooftop, and the towel that the firearm was wrapped in.

X.com posts:​