(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) George Zinn, right, shares a moment with former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, second from left, at Hughes' 2020 announcement of his run for governor. Hughes remarked on Zinn's penchant for showing up at all manner of political events.
Images rapidly circulated online Wednesday showing police escorting an elderly man away after the fatal shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — and many Utahns recognized him as occasionally ubiquitous activist George Zinn, 71.
Police said he was taken into custody on suspicion of obstruction of justice. Law enforcement said he did not match the description of the shooter. The FBI said it has a person in custody in connection with the shooting.
The Salt Lake Tribune’s attempts to reach Zinn were unsuccessful. An attorney who represented Zinn in a misdemeanor case earlier this year also did not respond to a request for comment.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) George Zinn attends Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s State of the County address in West Jordan on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023.
Zinn is known for showing up — and occasionally disrupting or being arrested at — events ranging from political speeches to the Sundance Film Festival to various protests. He holds the distinction of being
the first person thrown out by security at the swanky City Creek Center mall when it first opened in downtown Salt Lake City in March 2012.
In one widely shared video from the Orem campus, a uniformed officer and men in plainclothes are holding Zinn’s arms and moving him away from the scene. At one point, his pants fell and bunched around his ankles, revealing his boxer shorts. Spectators were yelling at Zinn, with one repeating “How dare you?”
Near the end of the video, one uniformed officer is heard saying, “He said he shot him, but I don’t know.”
[Related: From 2013: Utah man accused of marathon bomb threat gets probation]
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told The Tribune on Wednesday that his office had prosecuted Zinn, whose criminal history dates back to the ’80s, numerous times.
Often, Gill said, Zinn was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. He said Zinn was politically conservative, leaning libertarian, and would “give me a hard time for being a Dem.” Zinn had a curiosity about politics and “almost every political event you can think of, there was always George somewhere in the background, listening.”
“He’s a person who can be odd, and has those kinds of sometimes odd behavior challenges,” Gill said, “but by and large, he’s more of a gadfly than anything else.”
Gill said his office had previously tried to get Zinn enrolled in mental health court for some of his misdemeanor charges, but “never really participated in that.” While Zinn had mental health challenges, Gill said they were “always maintainable” and he was never nonfunctional.
Most recently, in May, Zinn was arrested by Ogden police on a misdemeanor count of “pedestrian in roadway.”
“George stated he didn’t care if the vehicles waited all day. I told George he needed to wait on the sidewalk, and not in the roadway,” the officer wrote. “ He told me he did not care, and to take him to jail.”
After “several minutes,” the report shows the officer did just that.
Months earlier, in January, police in Park City arrested him on suspicion of trespassing. He was banned from the festival after he reportedly tried to push his way into a Sundance Film Festival Q&A, but returned multiple times and was arrested days later.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) George Zinn is pictured at an event with Utah Sen. Mike Lee at the Sutherland Institute during a speaking engagement at the conservative public policy think tank on the University of Utah campus on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023.
The most serious charge against Zinn came in 2013, when he was charged with threatening to place bombs at the Salt Lake City Marathon finish line. Zinn
took a plea deal and received a sentence of probation, but was ultimately ordered to jail for one year, with credit for time served, after not meeting the conditions of his probation.
In recent years, Zinn attended Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s 2023 “State of the County” address, a 2023 Sutherland Institute event headlined by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, and former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes’ 2020 announcement that he was running for governor.
In 2019, when a downtown Salt Lake City protest against the Utah Inland Port Authority turned violent, Zinn was one of five people arrested and taken to jail,
KSL reported. Zinn, then 65, was arrested for investigation of disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. The other four people taken to jail were activists less than half his age.
In 2003, Zinn was a spectator at a Colorado court hearing for Kobe Bryant when the NBA star faced a sexual assault charge,
the Associated Press reported. He was a regular at promotional movie screenings along the Wasatch Front, until the advertising agencies that organized such screenings stopped letting him attend. And he was walking around Rice-Eccles Stadium, without a ticket, when The Rolling Stones performed there in 1994.
[Related: From 2012: Rolly: Utah Republicans ask, ‘Where’s George?’]
For a time, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, Zinn was well known among Utah Republicans as a regular presence at party events, though he held no official position in the party.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) George Zinn walks in a Martin Luther King Day march in 2023.
In a story that Salt Lake Tribune political columnist
Paul Rolly retold in 2012, Zinn showed up at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in 1988 without a place to stay — so T.H. Bell, a Utah Republican who had been Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, let him sleep in a cot in his hotel room.
Zinn tried a similar trick in Tampa in 2012, Rolly wrote at the time, hotel security forced Zinn to leave, even though the Utah delegation protested.
