Charlie Kirk’s widow held a rosary in her hand as she waved to supporters from the backseat of an SUV while escorting her husband’s body to a chapel in Arizona on Thursday evening.
Erika Frantzve fought back tears behind a pair of sunglasses as a throng of people waving American flags greeted the motorcade outside Phoenix’s Hansen Mortuary Chapel.
The 31-year-old conservative activist was flown to Arizona aboard Air Force 2.
Kirk was fatally shot in the neck by a single shot fired by a sniper atop the Losee Center, a building on the Utah Valley University campus, about 200 yards from where he was speaking to thousands as he kicked off his multi-city “American Comeback” tour.
Vice President JD Vance arranged for the flight after Wednesday’s assassination and chose to be at the heartbroken widow’s side following her husband’s death.
Vance cancelled plans to attend a 9/11 commemoration at Ground Zero in Manhattan, opting to travel to Utah with his wife, second lady Usha Vance, to be with Kirk’s family.
Kirk’s wife and parents were in Utah for the event when he was killed.
Frantzve and Usha Vance stepped off Air Force 2 hand-in-hand as they descended the stairs to the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport to watch the wooden casket be transferred to a hearse for the 10-mile drive to the chapel.
Earlier in the day, the 41-year-old vice president helped carry Kirk’s wooden casket to Air Force 2 during a private ceremony at Roland R. Wright Air National Guard Base in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Frantzve and Usha Vance stood to the side as Kirk’s Casket was placed on the plane.
Vance called Kirk a friend in a touching tribute to X hours after the Turning Point USA founder’s death.
“Charlie was constantly calling and texting, checking on our family and offering guidance and prayers,” Vance said. “After every event, he would give me a big hug, tell me he was praying for me, and ask me what he could do.”
Stay up to date on the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk
Vance detailed his first interaction with Kirk was years before getting into politics.
“A while ago, probably in 2017, I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show to talk about God knows what. Afterwards a name I barely knew sent me a DM on twitter and told me I did a great job. It was Charlie Kirk,” Vance wrote.
“Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives,” he added.
“When others were right, he learned from them. When he was right–as he usually was–he was generous. With Charlie, the attitude was never, ‘I told you so.’ But: ‘welcome.’”
Vance says his relationship with Kirk blossomed to the point the activist began campaigning for the bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” author before he even ran to be an Ohio senator.
“He had no reason to do this, no expectation that I’d go anywhere. I was polling, at that point, well below 5 percent,” Vance wrote. “He did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man.”
Frantzve, the 2012 Miss Arizona, married the conservative activist in 2021. The couple shared two young children.
President Trump told reporters on Thursday that he had spoken at length with Frantzve after Kirk was gunned down by a lone shooter, who remains at large.
“I spoke to Erika, his wife. And we had a long talk,” the commander in chief said. “And she’s devastated. She is absolutely devastated, as you can imagine.”
Trump said he would be attending Kirk’s funeral, calling it an “obligation.”
The 79-year-old president also announced he would posthumously award Kirk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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