Police chief says the victim was not shot by the suspect, who is in jail.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd gives an update Sunday, June 15, 2025, on the deadly shooting at a “No Kings” march the day before.
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A marcher critically wounded in a shooting at Salt Lake City’s 10,000-strong “No Kings” protest on Saturday night has died, police reported Sunday afternoon.
“Our victim was not the intended target,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said, “but rather an innocent bystander participating in the demonstration.”
Redd said the victim, later identified as 39-year-old Clearfield resident Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, apparently was shot by one of two individuals in neon vests who had been part of the event’s “peacekeeping team.”
The police chief said that just before the shooting, the two had been trying to intervene when they saw a man move behind a wall along the route of the downtown procession and retrieve a rifle.
Police say that man was 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa.
The “peacekeeping” men in vests confronted Gamboa, Redd said, and the man then raised his rifle and ran toward the crowd.
One of the men in vests then fired a handgun three times toward Gamboa as he ran into the crowd, according to police. Ah Loo was fatally struck by a bullet, according to police; Gamboa was also hit by the gunfire.
The gunshots scattered the thongs of protesters, who by then had marched about a mile from Pioneer Park to the demonstration’s planned terminus at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building at 125 S. State St.
Officers detained these vested men but did not arrest them. They are not in custody, said Redd, adding that the shooter is cooperating with police.
The chief said police did not fire any shots.
Redd identified the suspect as 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa, whom The Salt Lake Tribune confirmed is being held in the Salt Lake County jail.
Officers found Gamboa within minutes of the shooting, himself injured from a “minor” gunshot wound and hiding within a “group of people” near 100 South and 200 East, Redd said. They also found an assault-style rifle, a gas mask and backpack that, he added, police believe belonged to Gamboa.
The chief said Gamboa did not fire a weapon.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
A review of court records shows Gamboa had two speeding tickets in 2023 but otherwise has never been charged with a crime in Utah.
Though Gamboa never fired a weapon, an arresting officer booked him into jail on suspicion of murder, writing in a probable cause statement that he believed Gamboa “was acting under circumstances evidencing a depraved indifference to human life, and knowingly engage[d] in conduct that create[d] a grave risk of death to another individual and thereby cause[d] the death of the other individual.”
Charging decisions ultimately rest with Salt Lake County prosecutors. Gamboa had not been formally charged as of Sunday afternoon and is being held in jail without bail.
Redd said officers were “very prepared” for Thursday’s large protest, and “were even more prepared” Saturday. He said they did not have any reason to suspect violence or threats at the demonstration and called the protest otherwise “very peaceful.”
“This,” he said, “came out of nowhere.”
The chief issued his 12-minute statement from behind a podium at the downtown Public Safety Building, about a mile from where the man was shot Saturday, telling Utahns that what happened was “sudden and alarming and not representative of our values here in Salt Lake City, or in our state.”
“Our teams acted with courage and professionalism,” Redd said, “and responded very quickly in the middle of chaos.”
He offered his condolences to the family of the man killed and all others impacted.
“No one,” Redd said, “should fear coming to a demonstration, a peaceful lawful demonstration, in our city.”
This story will be updated.