If Bullet
The neck, if a bullet did it
This tab draws the prosecution's account exactly as the prosecutors tell it, then tests it one injury at a time. Words in yellow boxes are the medical examiner's, as quoted by prosecutors in their brief of July 28, 2026. The report itself, State's Exhibit 11, is still sealed.
If Bullet · Step 1
One shot, from a roof 415 feet away
Prosecutors say a rifle round fired from the roof of the Losee Center struck the left side of Charlie Kirk's neck at about 12:23 p.m. on September 10, 2025. A crime-scene sergeant testified the rooftop perch was about 415 feet from the tent and about 68 feet higher. From those sworn figures the path drops about 9 degrees. Published estimates put it nearer 6 degrees, anywhere from 4 to 10. Either way it is close to level.
The .30-06 rifle round is the government's narrative. This tab draws it the way the State describes it, so each injury can be checked against it.
Sources: State's bindover brief, p. 2 · preliminary hearing, Day 4
If Bullet · Step 2
Where it went in
"complex entrance gunshot wound"State's Exhibit 11, pages 1 and 3, as quoted by prosecutors
The entrance reportedly sat low on the front-left of his neck, between the voice box and the windpipe. A rifle round usually leaves a small, round entrance. "Complex" means this one was not a small, neat hole.
One crowd witness's handwritten statement describes a "dime size impact". The report calls it a gunshot wound, but the examiner who wrote it has never been asked under oath what that finding rests on.
Source: State's Exhibit 11, as quoted
If Bullet · Step 3
"Front to back, slightly left to right, and downward"
That line is the prosecutors' summary, not the examiner's words. In the brief it sits outside the quotation marks, a summary of pages 1 and 4 of a report the public cannot read.
Drawn at the sworn 9-degree drop, with the published 4-to-10-degree range shaded around it (the thin line is 6 degrees), the path runs almost level, straight back toward the spine. The glowing tube around it is the stretch zone: a high-speed rifle round briefly shoves tissue aside around its track. We draw it generously, about 1½ inches, to give the bullet every benefit.
There was no exit wound. The head of his security detail said he checked for one in the car and found none.
Sources: The State's brief: its one-line direction · Exhibit 11 Analysis
If Bullet · Step 4
Cut across the neck at the wound
Here the neck is sliced flat at the height of the entry and seen from above, with his face toward the bottom of the picture. His left side is on your right.
A level path from the front-left runs past the windpipe, past the left carotid artery and into the bone. Inside this slice, the bullet story can work: a round along this line could hole the carotid, break the windpipe's rings and reach the spine.
This is the one place where Jon Bray's finding-by-finding comparison scores the bullet slightly ahead: the breaks in the voice box and windpipe line up like a single track. Fits either
Source: Exhibit 11 Analysis: bullet versus blast
If Bullet · Step 5
The examiner's list runs outward, not back
"sequentially perforated the anterior left side of [Mr. Kirk's] neck, strap muscles of the left side of the neck, [and the] left common carotid and left internal and external jugular veins"Exhibit 11, page 3, as quoted. Square brackets are the prosecutors' edits.
"Sequentially" means in order. Read in that order, each structure sits further out toward his left side: 1 the strap muscles beside the windpipe, 2 the carotid artery, 3 the internal jugular vein, 4 the external jugular vein, just under the skin at the side of the neck.
The State's one line says the path drifted slightly from his left toward his right, back toward the middle. The examiner's own order moves the other way: sideways, and outward.
Source: State's Exhibit 11: the ordered list
If Bullet · Step 6
A hunting round that stopped in a neck
A 180-grain .30-06 leaves the muzzle with roughly 3,950 joules of energy, about eight times a 9mm handgun round. Rounds like that are built to pass through large game. Yet the State says this one "fragmented in Mr. Kirk's neck". "Fragmented" is the prosecutors' word.
The ATF received one bullet-jacket fragment and four pieces described as "lead". Its comparison with the rifle was "inconclusive", and the lead pieces were "not suitable for microscopic comparison". The ATF examiner testified she was told a medical examiner's photo may show seven fragments, not five.
In the first frames of the video, the people beside him and the white tarp behind him were not sprayed with blood.
Sources: The mechanism of death: an explosive, not a rifle round · Ballistics: the ATF's inconclusive comparison
If Bullet · Step 7
Verdict for the neck
| Finding | If a bullet | |
|---|
| "Complex" entrance | Possible if the round hit something first or broke up | Either |
| Left vessels, in order | Reachable, but the order runs outward, not back | Either |
| Voice box and windpipe | A single track fits | Either |
| No exit, fragments | Hard to square with a .30-06 | Strains |
On its own, the neck can be made to fit a bullet. What a bullet in the neck does not reach is everything else the report lists: blood around the heart, blood on both sides of the chest, and bleeding on top of the brain.
Shaped Charge Explosion
The neck, if a charge at the microphone did it
Investigators who have studied the footage frame by frame conclude Charlie Kirk was killed by a small shaped charge in the wireless microphone transmitter he wore on his chest, under his shirt. This tab draws that conclusion and checks the same injuries against it.
Shaped Charge · Step 1
A matchbox-sized transmitter, under his shirt
He wore a RØDE wireless transmitter, about the size of a matchbox, under his white shirt, held by a magnetic clip on the outside of the fabric. On the front camera the clip shows as a small dark rectangle on the upper right chest: about 2 inches below the neckline of his T-shirt and 2 to 3 inches right of center, just under the right collarbone. It sits there in every frame where it can be seen, up to the moment he was hit. Some written accounts put it lower, near the right nipple. After the event the bulge is gone while the clip remains.
A shaped charge is a small explosive packed behind a cone so its blast drives forward in one narrow jet. Jon Bray's motion maps of the video put the center of the blast at the transmitter. The dashed outline runs from the spot the camera shows down to the lowest written account. From anywhere in it, the line to the wound runs up and across his body.
Sources: The RØDE Wireless PRO on his shirt · Jon Bray's video frame analysis
Shaped Charge · Step 2
The shirt moves first
On two independent cameras, his shirt and collar swell outward from the microphone before any blood appears. In one analysis, faint gas escapes the collar one frame before the fabric moves, the collar moves about a tenth of a second ahead of the rest of the frame, and the first blood shows 429 to 461 milliseconds later.
His silver necklace snapped and flew upward, toward his head. A bullet strikes first and the body reacts after. Here the outward push comes first.
From the transmitter to the wound is about five and a half inches. The line rises at about 45 degrees and leans across his body toward his left.
Sources: Ali Zreik's six forensic physics phenomena · Jon Bray's video frame analysis
Shaped Charge · Step 3
Outward from one point, in the examiner's own order
The same slice, from above. The examiner's ordered list starts beside the windpipe and steps outward to the side of the neck: strap muscles, carotid artery, internal jugular vein, external jugular vein.
Investigators read that as damage spreading from one point at the front of the neck: a fan of injury opening sideways, not one channel cut straight back.
Analyst Jon Bray matches a rectangular wound on the neck to the size of the transmitter's clasp or battery, two parts he tracks moving toward the neck in the video.
Sources: State's Exhibit 11: the ordered list · Jon Bray's video frame analysis
Shaped Charge · Step 4
The voice box and windpipe, broken in several places
"multiple disruptions of the thyroid, cricoid, and tracheal cartilages"Exhibit 11, page 3, as quoted by prosecutors
The thyroid cartilage is the Adam's apple. The cricoid is the ring just below it. The tracheal rings hold the windpipe open. All three sit at the very front of the neck.
A blast against the front of the neck crushes them where they sit. A single bullet track can also break them in a line, which is why this finding fits either cause. Fits either
Shaped Charge · Step 5
From below, the damage can climb
A charge on the chest sits below the neck. Its jet, and pieces of the device, travel up and across: the direction a path must run to reach bones near the skull.
The examiner lists the left side of six neck bones, C2 to C7, as destroyed: a stretch about four inches tall. A level path from a roof meets the spine at about one bone. That is the next page.
Shaped Charge · Step 6
Verdict for the neck
| Finding | If a shaped charge | |
|---|
| "Complex" entrance | Torn, irregular entries are typical of a blast | Fits |
| Left vessels, in order | Damage fanning out from one point | Fits |
| Voice box and windpipe | Crushed from the front | Either |
| No exit wound | Nothing passing through to exit | Fits |
What would settle it:
- Burns, soot or embedded powder on the skin of the neck and on the shirt.
- What every fragment is made of: copper and lead from a bullet, or plastic and metal from a device. One recovered piece has been read on video as charred plastic; no lab has tested it.
- The X-rays, showing where every fragment came to rest.
- The transmitter itself, which no agency has produced or tested.