‘This is a rifle!’: Alert bystander spotted the man who had a gun at the Salt Lake City ‘No Kings’ march

A man dressed in black was squatting quietly with a group of “No Kings” protesters taking refuge in the corner alcove of a downtown building, after gunshots had disrupted the end of a peaceful march of 10,000 from Pioneer Park.

Sam Hernandez had talked with the man a few minutes earlier on the street, and had seen the stock of a rifle in his backpack. Now he told the protesters gathered in the corner that he thought the man had a gun.

When no one reacted, Hernandez did.

Without thinking, he said in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday, he walked over to who police later identified as Arturo Gamboa and said, “You have a gun in your bag,” while he grabbed the backpack away.

“He tried to grab it a little bit. ... but I grabbed it and I held it out for the police,” Hernandez said.

A video posted by Jan-Michael Paul on Reddit shows Hernandez saying loudly, “This is a rifle right here,” and then flagging down nearby police: “Hey! This guy, I just grabbed this from this guy. He’s right there!”

A video provided to The Tribune by bystander Ben Behunin shows the next moments, as officers stand over Gamboa and shoo away the protesters who had been sitting and standing next to him. “He came from over there!” Hernandez exclaims to two officers, urging them to check the backpack.

Behunin was huddled with the other protesters and saw Hernandez confront Gamboa. It was a “frightening” situation for everyone at the protest, he said, and the people in the alcove were terrified — but Hernandez is “one of the heroes in the story.”

Hernandez credits the officers who reacted quickly.

“The police were awesome in this instance, just super professional,” Hernandez said. “They got on him right away, and I’m finding out he was the main suspect, and so hopefully we helped.”

At a Sunday news conference, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd confirmed Gamboa had been discovered hiding with protesters.

“The crowd actually pointed him out to law enforcement,” Redd said, “and their actions were heroic.”

Redd said officers found an AR-15 style rifle and a gas mask inside the backpack.

The police chief said investigators believe a man who was apparently part of the event’s “peacekeeping” team had fired the shot that ultimately killed Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, a 39-year-old Clearfield man who was participating in the march.

According to police, two “peacekeepers” saw Gamboa move behind a wall along the route of the downtown procession and retrieve a rifle, and they tried to intervene.

The “peacekeeping” men in vests confronted Gamboa, Redd said, and Gamboa raised his rifle and ran toward the crowd. One of the men in vests then fired a handgun three times toward Gamboa, according to police. Ah Loo was fatally struck by a bullet, according to police; Gamboa was also hit by the gunfire and fled.

As a father of three, Hernandez said his effort to protect those around him was instinctual. What he did on Saturday scared him more on Sunday than it did in the moment, he added.

“I wasn’t thinking of my life at all,” Hernandez said. “...I said, ‘This guy’s got a gun.’ Someone’s got to take him down.”

‘What are you doing with that?’

Gamboa was arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of murder — although investigators said he did not fire the weapon, Redd said at the news conference.

An arresting officer alleged in a probable cause statement that Gamboa acted with “a depraved indifference to human life” and his conduct led to Ah Loo’s death. Salt Lake County prosecutors ultimately will decide what charges, if any, Gamboa will face. He is currently being held in jail without bail and had not been formally charged as of Sunday afternoon.

Hernandez was at Saturday’s protest with his wife and his best friend. He is a “proud Chicano,” he said, and he joined the march to support the country’s melting pot of different cultures.

They heard gunshots when they turned left on to 200 South from State Street, and took off running, Hernandez said. People in the crowd told them to head south, then as they were running, others told them to head north in the chaos.

“We were feeling corralled,” Hernandez said. “I thought there would be multiple shooters possibly.”

Hernandez, his wife and his friend then tried to run in between buildings near 200 and 300 South. People began running toward him out of a parking garage, so Hernandez yelled to warn them that there was a shooter in the area.

“That’s the first time I saw [Gamboa]. He came to me and he said, ‘What do we do?’” Hernandez said. “I looked down at his bag, and I see the stock of a rifle at first. And I said, ‘Dude, what are you doing with that?’ And he said, ‘I came to protest.’

“I wasn’t sure if he was just having that for protection or not, but I remember seeing blood in the cuticles of his fingertips when he was holding that bag,” Hernandez said. “It looked like Kool-Aid stains, like he had wiped them clean recently.”

Then Gamboa started to blend in with the growing crowd of people running away. Hernandez didn’t suspect him immediately, he said, but thought their interaction was odd.

‘It was a full reaction’

Authorities then urged the crowd to head north, and Hernandez and his group took cover under in the alcove of the building near 100 South 200 East, he said. They were talking with other protesters who had sheltered there when he saw Gamboa crouched nearby.

Gamboa had a look on his face like he was in shock, asking other people what they should do now, Hernandez recalled. Behunin said Gamboa was sitting cross-legged with the crowd, “like he’s like the rest of us taking shelter.”

Hernandez told the crowd Gamboa had a gun, then seized his backpack himself.

“I’m just thinking the gun was still there,” Hernandez said. “I don’t know if he could have used it, but if no one suspected him, he probably could have shot ... 50 people or something.”

His wife is a teacher, Hernandez said, and that feeling of doing what he had to do in the moment is one he’s still wrestling with, especially when he thinks of delayed police responses to school shootings, such as the one in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.

“I just didn’t think; it was a full reaction,” said Hernandez, of Salt Lake City. “My wife was right there, and she’s freaked out even more... I’m just glad there wasn’t more shootings.”

Behunin, also of Salt Lake City, caught up with Hernandez after Gamboa’s arrest and shared the video he had taken with him. Behunin had just left church when he spoke with The Tribune on Sunday afternoon, and said a friend who had also attended Saturday’s protest brought his teenage daughter.

“They heard the gunshots and, and he’s like, ‘This is not normal,’” Behunin recalled. “And his daughter’s like, ‘Dad, this is normal. We have to do drills for this in school all the time, this is the new normal.’ It’s kind of shocking to just recognize that, yeah, this stuff is happening way too frequently.”

“God bless us all,” Behunin continued. “I have great faith that this is all going to work out somehow, but we’ve got to come together rather than feeling apart.”