Criminal charges are being filed against the 16-year-old shooter who is accused of shooting and killing three people at West Valley City’s WestFest celebrations Sunday night, Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill announced Friday.
Gill also revealed that one of those killed, Fnu Reena, 41, was 8 weeks pregnant. Another of the victims, Anderson Garcia Cabrera Jr., was 8 months old.
According to Gill, the alleged shooter told officers he did not mean to shoot the woman or the baby, but smiled and laughed when officers informed him he had killed 18-year-old Hassan Lugundi.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill gives the details of the fatal shooting at WestFest in West Valley City last weekend, during a news conference on Friday, June 20, 2025.
Gill’s office filed the charges in Utah’s 3rd District Court, not in juvenile court. Gill’s spokesperson said prosecutors are charging the teen shooter as an adult. (The Tribune typically does not name an underage suspect, unless he is charged as an adult.)
The teen, Matthiaz Cantre Lauti Ioane-Register, is facing 13 criminal counts, including four counts of aggravated murder — the fourth for Reena’s unborn child.
Along with the aggravated murder charges — all first-degree felonies — Ioane-Register is facing five more first-degree felony charges and a second-degree felony charge for felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and three more third-degree felonies for felony discharge of a firearm.
Gill said Ioane-Register — because he is a minor, and because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings — will not face the possibility of the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted of murder.
Detectives reviewed video of the shooting that showed the alleged shooter holding a firearm while shooting at Lugundi, who can be seen running before appearing to be hit and falling, charging documents say.
“Within the backstop of that direction, we have the 41-year-old. We have the 8-month-old child,” Gill said.
The infant was actually a twin, Gill said. Court documents say he was sitting next to his brother in a stroller when he was shot.
Then, court documents say, the shooter “continues firing at [Lugundi] while he is on the ground” before dropping the gun.
According to charging documents, Ioane-Register belonged to a local gang that was in a feud with another local gang, members of which were friends with Lugundi.
“I know what I hit because I know where I was aiming, and I know where I was shooting,” Ioane-Register told an officer at the festival, according to charging documents. “I did not hit no baby. It was only one person I hit.”
Along with the three people killed, officers found that two other teenagers were wounded by the gunfire, and a pregnant woman was hurt while trying to get over a fence to leave the scene.
He said it’s rare for that many people to be killed in a single criminal act.
Gill said investigators believe Ioane-Register shot until his firearm was empty before dropping it to the ground. The 9mm pistol had been stolen from someone in Crowley, Louisiana, Gill said.
Later, Gill said Ioane-Register told officers that he found it on the ground after he heard gunshots and started running.