It would be understandable if Erika Kirk wanted retribution.
The horrific death of her husband on a college campus in Utah was recent enough to be easily counted in days. In an interview with the New York Times ahead of conservative activist Charlie Kirk‘s funeral, however, she said that his assassination was “God’s plan” and that her faith keeps her from wanting revenge.
“I’ve had so many people ask, ‘Do you feel anger toward this man? Like, do you want to seek the death penalty?’ I’ll be honest. I told our lawyer, I want the government to decide this. I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger,” she told the outlet. “Because when I get to heaven, and Jesus is like: ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’ And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”
The Turning Point USA founder was at the first stop of a planned tour of college campuses when he was fatally shot in the neck. 22-year-old Tyler Robinson has been charged with murder. Just prior to that day, however, Erika Kirk described a charged and excited atmosphere in her household.
“His adrenal glands were just going off,” Erika Kirk said. “He’d been waiting all summer to begin touring… He had whiteboard sessions for hours. Mock debates. He was just so excited.”
Erika Kirk said that she was meant to be at the first event of her husband’s “American Comeback” tour, but stayed behind in Arizona because her mother was undergoing medical treatment. She got the call that her husband had been shot while sitting in her mother’s hospital room. Charlie Kirk’s plane took Erika to Provo, where she insisted on seeing her husband’s body.
“I want to see what they did to my husband,” she recalled to the Times. “His eyes were semi-open. And he had this knowing, Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”
