This article is co-published with The Handbasket.
Here is what we can say for sure: Approximately 10,000 people gathered in downtown Salt Lake City on Saturday for the No Kings protest and march organized by the Utah chapter of the 50501 Movement. Among the attendees was Arturo Gamboa, 24, a local man openly carrying a rifle, which is legal in Utah. An armed “safety volunteer” in a bright yellow vest spotted Gamboa, perceived a threat, and fired his weapon in his direction. He struck Gamboa, and in the process struck and killed protester Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39. Gamboa, who police say did not fire his gun, was arrested a few blocks away and booked in county jail for suspicion of murder.
The early—and now clearly wrong—version of events went something like this: Gamboa was seen manipulating his gun, aimed it at the crowd and began running towards people; the safety volunteer (previously referred to as a “peacekeeper”) spotted Gamboa advancing on the crowd, fired his weapon to stop him, and accidentally struck and killed Ah Loo. An initial and now-deleted statement from organizers even referred to Gamboa as a “domestic terrorist.” But in the days since the chaotic scene, video evidence and eyewitness testimony appear to show Gamboa made no such threat, the volunteer took matters into his own hands, and it seems that a man who never fired a shot is being scapegoated as the villain.
A press statement issued late Monday by Utah 50501 night shed a bit more light on how the volunteer even ended up at the protest. The group said that their team of “safety volunteers” were “selected because of their military, first responder, and other relevant de-escalation experience.” They said the volunteer who shot Gamboa and Ah Loo is a military veteran, but did not disclose his identity, and maintained he acted appropriately. “The person currently in custody was apprehended thanks to a protestor who saw the rifle and brought it to police attention.”
The 50501 statement acknowledges that Ah Loo—a fashion designer and beloved father of two—was killed, but not that their volunteer was the one who may have fired the fatal shot.
“Volunteer peacekeeping teams are common for protests,” Sarah Parker, a national coordinator for 50501 Movement, told The AP in the immediate aftermath of the shoot. But Parker said the organizers asked attendees, including the peacekeepers, not to bring weapons. Per AP: “Still, Parker said they stopped what could’ve been a larger mass casualty event.”
Initial response
Shortly before 8 pm MT on Saturday, some of the crowd marching toward the Wallace Bennett Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City began to panic and scatter as word spread about a possible active shooter situation. Reports from local news outlets and on social media about a shooting began pouring in around the same time.
Some initial accounts reported that Gamboa was suspiciously touching his AR-15 rifle, the safety volunteer spotted him, yelled verbal commands for him to drop his weapon, and when he didn’t, opened fire. Other reports made it sound as though Gamboa was the one who shot Ah Loo and then ran to hide from authorities.
Video taken at the scene after Gamboa ran from the safety volunteer shows, as the Utah 50501 statement referenced, a bystander surreptitiously taking his gun bag, alerting a nearby police officer while pointing out Gamboa, who then arrested him. At the time, it was likely they believed Gamboa was the one who had fired the shots a few blocks away because he was carrying a gun.
That evening, Utah 50501 issued a statement that pinned responsibility for the tragedy on Gamboa without naming him.
“We are grateful to the SLC first responders and our safety team at the event for their quick response to the shooting, for apprehending the suspect before he could injure more people, and for helping get the protesters to safely clear the area,” the statement read. “We condemn the shooter and all violence directed at our peaceful community members in the strongest possible terms.”
In another now-deleted social media post they also wrote that although they were still gathering the facts, “From our understanding, this was caused by a depraved and disturbed domestic terrorist who brandished an AR-15 and went into a crowd of peaceful protesters with an agenda to commit what we can only assume to be a mass shooting.”
About two hours after the incident, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said they detained Gamboa, who had also suffered a gunshot wound, about two blocks away from where the shooting happened. Redd said they also had detained two other people involved.
On Sunday, Salt Lake City police told the now highly-disputed version of events that the 50501 “peacekeepers” told police that they saw Gamboa move behind a wall, remove an AR-15-style rifle from his backpack and “manipulate it.” They said they confronted Gamboa and ordered him to drop the weapon, but he ignored that command. One of them fired three rounds at Gamboa when he allegedly began to advance on a group of protesters. Both of the men were armed.
On the ground
Jake Gatenby, a Salt Lake City-based freelance photographer, was by his estimation 15-30 feet in front of Ah Loo when he shot. He said he was angry to learn the armed volunteers had been hired by the protest organizers, “but from what I experienced before, during, and after the shooting it makes sense.”
Gatenby said the behavior of the volunteers in yellow vests had struck him as strange from the start. He said they “acted as if they were there to control the protestors, rather than protect them.”
According to Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd, witnesses reported that Gamboa “raised the weapon in a firing position and began running toward the crowd.” But video taken from a balcony overlooking the protest appears to show something different.
“It clearly shows Arturo in full black dress casually walking towards the protest with his rifle pointed down towards the ground and one hand on the barrel,” a friend of Gamboa, whose name isn’t being shared to ensure his safety, said after watching the video many times over. “The security team approached him from the side and rear, almost across the street, with weapons out.”
He continued: “You can hear in the audio that they fire on Arturo, at which point he leans forward, which causes the rifle and his hand to come up, but not in a ready position, in a fleeing position. The security team continues to fire twice more, and Arturo runs away as the video ends.”
It was this sudden repositioning in response to the volunteer shooting his gun that may have made it appear as though Gamboa was aiming his weapon at the crowd. But no video shared so far bears out that version.
“I am shaking with anger with how unnecessary it all was,” Gatenby said. “It feels like there were major lapses in top-down judgment since the conception of this event. A man is dead, another innocent man is in jail, and hundreds of people are traumatized because of piss poor decisions from the organizers to the shooter.”
The use of “peacekeepers” for safety and security by the 50501 organization is an extra step that other groups organizing protests in Salt Lake City don’t seem to employ. Earlier on Saturday, about 3,000 people showed up for a “No Kings” protest at the University of Utah sponsored by Salt Lake Indivisible. That group relies on local police for their events or the Utah Highway Patrol if they are demonstrating at the Utah State Capitol.
Sources say the 50501 peacekeepers operate in pairs and often use body cameras to document their interactions. It’s unclear whether the two peacekeepers involved in the fatal incident were wearing cameras on Saturday.
On Tuesday evening, a local television station published new video (that had already been circulating on social media) of the incident which appears to show the two volunteer peacekeepers with their guns raised toward Gamboa, who is pointing his rifle at the ground. At that point, three gunshots can be heard and Gamboa can be seen running away.
Who is Gamboa?
Arturo Gamboa, 24, is a local Salt Lake punk musician who started attending protests in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and in support of Black Lives Matter. An attendee at Saturday’s protest who did not witness the shooting said he remembered seeing Gamboa earlier in the day handing out masks to fellow protesters.
“He’s a good kid,” Gamboa's friend, who has known him since 2015, said. “Literally willing to take a bullet for his community.”
In a 2021 podcast interview with one of his bands, Rade, Gamboa described what it was like growing up with mixed parents and in the Mormon Church. “It was a game of ‘try and be as Americanized as you possibly can’,” he told Slug Mag.
In the interview he also talked about growing up in a military family and how that informed his views on international and community relations. “The American system is a steam train that’s always been fueled by Black and Brown bodies and by the emotional, physical, and spiritual pain of poor people,” he said. “It was very clear that only white men were considered equal. That opened the floodgates for me to understand the real horrors of living in America.”
Now Gamboa, the son of a Venezuelan immigrant, has become one of those bodies.
Robert Evans, host of the popular podcast Behind the Bastards, posted on Bluesky on Sunday, that he’d learned a bit more about Gamboa from a local. “He'd done armed protesting before. Dressed more radically. Was a little awkward. No more than that.”
“I think the most important thing is shifting perspective from violent extremist to community member and activist,” his friend said. “He put himself on the front lines of dozens of protests all through 2020 because he cares deeply for his community, open carrying as a deterrent and acting as a protector.”
The friend described him as smart, level-headed, well-read and passionate. “He would never act as an aggressor, but is fiercely protective, willing to step in and deescalate or protect whenever needed.”
He acknowledged that going solo and armed to a protest put on by a large organization working in tandem with law enforcement was a risk. “I just don’t think he thought past wanting to be involved and supportive.” Even still, he called the media portrayal of his friend’s actions “sickening.”
Utah gun laws & safety
The circumstances of the protest invite other questions: Does the mere possession of a gun at a protest in an open carry state constitute a threat? Do protesters have a right to know ahead of time that organizers intentionally selected volunteers with military training to monitor them?
Utah’s gun laws are extremely lax. Anyone over 21 can carry a loaded pistol, either concealed or in the open, in most public places. Other guns, like rifles and shotguns, can be carried in public so long as there is no round in the chamber.
The organizers of Saturday’s protest have still not made it clear whether or not they asked the safety volunteers to be armed or not. While it’s certainly possible the presence of Gamboa’s gun made other protest attendees uncomfortable, all available evidence at this point does not show him using it in any nefarious way.
“If he had intent to do harm, he had at least 60 feet before nearing the crowd to have shot,” Matthew Tycer, a Portland, Oregon-based firearms safety instructor who teaches Utah state concealed firearm permit requirements and reviewed video of the shooting, said.
“He could have returned fire. He could have been engaged, then started shooting at others around him,” Tycer said. “Instead he ran because he was shot at by the inept security.”
