About a dozen protesters and counterprotesters gathered Saturday outside a record store in McHenry over comments made by the owner regarding the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Vinyl Frontier Records owner Tim Wille received strong backlash for a comment he made on a social media post earlier this month after Kirk was shot and killed Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. Screenshots of Wille’s comment on the now-deleted post circulated on Facebook that said, “I don’t know who the [expletive] shot that man, but I’ll buy him a beer.”

The comment prompted a public event created on Facebook calling for “real Christian patriots” to stand outside the record store to protest Willes’s comments in which the organizer, identified on Facebook as Ray Roach, called Wille “evil vile narcissistic.” The organizer could not be reached for comment.

However, the gathering also drew in people defending Wille after a post on the Indivisible McHenry County Facebook page urged people to protest the right to free speech.

“It was a callous thing to say, but Tim still had the right to say it,” Indivisible McHenry County communications lead Sue Rose said in the Facebook post.

Wille, who could not be immediately reached for comment, also notified social media of the rally on his record shop’s Facebook page.

“There is a vigil for Charlie Kirk/free [speech] rally in the parking lot of the record store today,” Wille said in the post. “If you want to come by and say hello, please do. There is free pop and free water in front of the building.”

Martin Coonen, who attended as a counterprotester, said he saw Wille speak with protesters, helped them set up and offered them water.

“He was as hospitable as a target of protest could possibly be,” Coonen said.

Despite heavy tensions around Kirk’s killing across the nation, the event was a cordial coexistence with “no yelling, threats or any sort of physical contact between anyone there,” Coonen said.

Wille “turned what was a pretty ugly situation into a moment of unity is what I saw,” McHenry resident Jordan Marozas said.

In total, the crowd grew to only about a dozen, said Marozas, who was there to take photos. The organizer later commented on the public event page that he was “disappointed” and that the turnout was “a total bust.”

Unlike previous protests Marozas has photographed, this one held a common theme of free speech rights on both side.

“It was hard to distinguish between the counterprotesters and the protesters,” he said. “They all had the same signs this time.”

Local memorials for Kirk continue in McHenry County with GOPac, a group that promotes Republican candidates, hosting a celebration of life Sunday in Woodstock to coincide with Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona Sunday.

Since Kirk’s death, comments about him have raised controversy both nationwide and locally. A Crystal Lake School District 47 Board member received backlash for posts she made about Kirk, although the board declined to censure her.