Medical experts have revealed exactly what happened inside Charlie Kirk‘s body in the moments after he was shot in the neck last Wednesday (September 10).
Charlie Kirk, a long-standing ally of President Donald Trump, was fatally shot in the neck while hosting an event on a university campus in Utah on Wednesday (September 10).
The FBI revealed the identity of the alleged assassin on Friday (September 12), after a 33-hour manhunt, as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.
The suspect is a Utah resident and was aware that the MAGA activist was coming to his state long before the shooting unfolded.
He appeared in Utah County Court for the first time earlier this week (September 16) via video link from his prison cell.
The alleged murderer faces seven charges, including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm, two counts of obstruction of justice, two counts of witness tampering, and committing a violent crime when children are present.
Officials also noted that they would seek the death penalty over the shooting of the 31-year-old.
Graphic footage of the attack has circulated on social media in the wake of his death, with some questioning whether Kirk even knew he had been shot.
Speaking in a YouTube clip, neuropsychologist Derek Van Schaik, analyzed the footage and revealed that everything unfolded ‘far too fast for his brain to even register what had happened.’
But what exactly happened to his body in the moments that occurred following the fatal gunshot?
Anatomy teacher Josh Cottle has taken to Instagram to explain.
Cottle explained that the body ‘reacts particularly badly whenever a hole is produced by an object moving at super sonic speeds through an area where cable management is a top priority.’
Interestingly, he added: “To the people saying if there had been an ambulance on this scene or he had gotten proper medical care, that the outcome would have been different – that is not the case.
“He could have been shot in an emergency room and the outcome would have been the same.”
He explained that the neck has external and internal jugular veins, which drain blood from the head back to the heart.
The expert said: “On the left side, you have half of the blood flow to the brain at any given time.
“This all means that severing these with anything is a big no-no in the user’s manual of the human body.
“Now I want you to forget about all that because this would only matter if there had been an arrow or a knife.
“In this instance we’re dealing with a high speed projectile and that means we need to talk about something called a temporary wound cavity.”
He added that the human body ‘is mostly water and soft tissue.’
“So as that bullet was passing through here it was causing a ballooning and violent expansion of all of this tissue,” Cottle said.
“And that led to a complete obliteration or at least very severe damage to the connection between the spinal chord and the brain.”
He added: “There were also multiple angles of this and none of them indicated any kind of exit wound, which means all the energy from that projectile likely went directly into the spinal column.”
