The parents of a man who was briefly detained after Wednesday’s fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk — then released by law enforcement who publicly announced his name — say their son has been threatened online.

Ahmed Qureshi said his son, Zachariah, 25, is facing the trauma of witnessing Kirk’s assassination on the Utah Valley University campus, and the stress of being detained and becoming a national target.

Zachariah is not a UVU student and had attended Kirk’s speech because he is a fan, his father said. His son still doesn’t know why he was detained, his father said.

Ahmed Qureshi said Zachariah has been threatened and harassed online, with his personal information spread widely, and did not want to speak publicly.

He left campus and was at his Provo apartment Wednesday afternoon when Provo police arrived and detained him as a person of interest in Kirk’s shooting, Ahmed Qureshi said.

Law enforcement released him a few hours later — with Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, saying, “there are no current ties to the shooting with” the man.

Detaining his son, Ahmed Qureshi said, is “sloppy police work at the national and tactical level of city policing.”

A spokesperson for the Utah Department of Public Safety, which is leading the investigation, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Zachariah, a recent graduate of Brigham Young University, looked up to Kirk and agreed with most of his stances, his father said.

“He’d attended a Turning Point event before and was there to hear Charlie speak,” his mother, Juliette Qureshi, said. “He was devastated for his family. He also didn’t have anything to tell the FBI that everyone there on the ground didn’t also see.”

When Kirk was shot, Ahmed Qureshi said, Zachariah was waiting in line to ask a question. Then, horrified by the violence before him, Ahmed Qureshi said, his son fled the scene with the 3,000 others attending.

Ahmed Qureshi said his son’s innocence hasn’t stopped people from targeting him online. Zachariah’s mother, Juliette, said she hopes the misinformation that’s been posted about her son on social media will be deleted.

Zachariah, his father said, is furious that law enforcement didn’t simply question him along with the many other people at the scene.

“The focus should be on Charlie Kirk’s family,” Ahmed Qureshi said. “We felt bad all day about the event.”