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A man who was shot during a “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday has died in the hospital, according to police.
“Our victim was not the intended target, but rather an innocent bystander participating in the demonstration,” Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said during a press conference on Sunday.
Police have identified the victim as Utah resident Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39. The Utah medical examiner’s office will determine his official cause of death.
Utah resident Arturo Gamboa, 24, allegedly raised a gun and ran towards a protest crowd around 8 p.m., according to police.
Two people in neon vests armed with handguns, thought to be serving on a “peacekeeping team” for the event, then moved to intervene, police said.
“During interviews, detectives learned the two peacekeepers saw Gamboa move away from the crowd and move into a secluded area behind a wall — behavior they found suspicious,” a police statement reads.
“One of the peacekeepers told detectives he saw Gamboa pull out an AR-15-style rifle from a backpack and begin manipulating it,” the statement adds .”The peacekeepers drew their firearms and ordered Gamboa to drop the weapon.”
Witnesses said that Gamboa instead lifted his rifle and ran towards a crowd on State Street, holding the weapon in firing position.
“One of the individuals fired three rounds, striking Gamboa and tragically striking the man who later died,” Redd said at the press conference.
Neither police nor Gamboa fired any rounds.
Gamboa, who had a minor gunshot wound, was later found “hiding in a group of people,” Redd said, and officers recovered an AR-15 style assault rifle and a gas mask nearby.
Police “have developed probable cause that Gamboa acted under circumstances that showed a depraved indifference to human life, knowingly engaged in conduct that created a grave risk of death and ultimately caused the death of an innocent community member,” according to the department.
The 24-year-old had not yet been charged as of Sunday afternoon, and his only previous recorded interactions with law enforcement were two speeding tickets in 2023, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.
The actions of the apparent peacekeepers are also under investigation, and police have said the shooter is cooperating with officials. That individual is not currently in detention.
Utah 50501, which organized the Salt Lake City protest, is also in contact with police.
“Our team was directly involved. We have been in direct contact with law enforcement,” the group wrote on Facebook. “Our teams just had to deal with something extremely traumatizing and when faced with personal risk to their own lives, chose to run towards the danger in order to serve this community.”
The Salt Lake City “No Kings” protest drew an estimated 10,000 people.
The event joined a wave of “No Kings” protests across the country that drew an estimated 5 million attendees demonstrating against Donald Trump’s administration. More than 2,000 demonstrations in cities and small towns across the country participated.
The protests occurred largely without incident, though there were sporadic arrests, and drivers struck demonstrators with their vehicles in Virginia and San Francisco. The latter incident sent at least one one person to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police and protesters also clashed outside a federal building in Los Angeles, where police officers and sheriffs deputies in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters following a week of demonstrations in the city against Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda.
