Post about Charlie Kirk spurs threats against Ohio city leader

(CN) — After Christian political activist Charlie Kirk’s murder at a Utah rally on Sept. 10 made world headlines, a longtime City Council member in Fairview Park, Ohio, responded to his family’s comments on Facebook: “A lot of good people died today. Charlie Kirk wasn’t one of them.” That was the entirety of his message to his family.

By Sept. 11, it had been reposted hundreds of times across social media, and Fairview Park City Council President Michael Kilbane had received “hundreds of threats against me and my family, through my personal email, my council email, my phone, on X and Facebook,” he told Courthouse News.

A person or people unknown reposted his brief statement on Fairview Park’s home page, and on other social media.

“I couldn’t even use my phone because calls were coming in so quickly,” Kilbane said. “Just a lot of hateful stuff, threatening me to resign, saying ‘You don’t want your family to get hurt.’ They put my address out there, on Facebook, on X.

“I’ve received messages saying, ‘We’re coming for you,’ and then they cock a gun. I’ve also received pictures of people holding guns, with their Facebook message saying, ‘We know where to find you.’

“City police told me they had seen some credible threats. They parked a squad car outside my house for about four days, to protect my house, protect my neighbors. I did leave.” With his dog.

His adult son also decided to leave.

Fairview Park Police Chief Paul Shepard confirmed Kilbane’s story.

“We did post a guard outside his house regularly,” the police chief said. “There was a great volume of threats, people stopping by, taking pictures of his house, honking horns, waving Trump flags.

“A picture of his house was posted on [the city’s] web page. We put special attention on his house. If we knew that someone was coming, we’d have [posted an officer] inside.”

Kilbane, 58, is the son of an Irish immigrant father. He was elected to the City Council in 2008, reelected repeatedly, and was president of the council when he felt forced to resign. He told Courthouse News that “federal pressure” was exerted on the mayor to ask him to quit.

Mayor Bill Schneider did not reply to telephone and email requests for comments. He did post an open letter on Facebook on Sept. 12, stating, inter alia:* “* Staff and I spent yesterday responding to many calls and emails from residents and individuals nationwide concerned with social media comments made by a councilmember regarding the passing of Charlie Kirk. These remarks were made through a personal social media account, and were not made through, or on, official city social media. These remarks are the councilmember’s words alone. They are not reflective of the views of the city of Fairview Park, city staff, or other elected officials.”

Fairview Park, pop. 17,200, a close western suburb of Cleveland, is represented in Congress by first-term congressman Max Miller, a Republican. Miller did not respond directly to requests for comment, but his press spokesman Griffin Moore sent Courthouse News two TikTok posts.

In the first one, Miller posted Kilbane’s short Facebook statement, adding: “He needs to resign. This is absolutely sickening.”

In the second TikTok post, Miller reposted Mayor Schneider’s open letter, and added: “Thank you, Mayor Schneider, for your leadership in putting out this statement. I trust that Councilmember Kilbane will understand that the only path forward is resignation.”

Kilbane told Courthouse News that the Cuyahoga Republican Party also demanded his resignation.

The Cuyahoga Republican Party did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment.

Kilbane, a 35-year member of the Ironworkers Union, told Courthouse News the Union Hall had also received threatening messages about him. The Union declined to comment.

Since Kirk’s murder, dozens of people across the nation have been fired and/or harassed after posting comments on social media, including teachers, professors, medical workers, librarians and small businesses.

The New York Times reported this week: “The American Association of University Professors, an organization founded to defend academic freedom, said it was aware of retaliation against about 60 professors and teachers in connection with critical comments they made about Mr. Kirk or people mourning him.”

In Texas alone, roughly 280 complaints have been filed against teachers for alleged comments about Kirk’s death, according to the Texas Tribune. Clemson University fired two professors and a staff member for their social media posts about Kirk, the Times reported, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock suspended a law professor for her comments.

With such furor over Kirk’s murder and the responses to it, Courthouse News asked Kilbane whether he was comfortable in having his story reported. He responded: “I’m not sure that anything you write about me could cause me to deal with anything worse than I’ve dealt with over the past seven or eight days. It’s been a nightmare. I’m not answering calls from numbers I don’t recognize at the moment.”

Kilbane said most of the threatening calls he received came with no caller ID.