What we know about Arturo Gamboa, the man arrested after the Salt Lake City ‘No Kings’ shooting

Arturo Gamboa is a 24-year-old local punk rock drummer who deeply cares about his community. He also likes guns, and at least a dozen times, he’s brought one to a protest.

That’s according to his longtime friend and roommate, who spoke with The Salt Lake Tribune about Gamboa.

When Gamboa did bring his gun to protests — an AR-15 style rifle — he never aimed it at anyone, his friend said. He never indicated he might use it, and no one ever fired on him thinking he was about to, the friend said. Not until the “No Kings” march in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this month.

So what changed between those earlier demonstrations — dating back to at least 2020 — and this one, where Gamboa was arrested on suspicion of murder after a protest volunteer opened fire on him, injuring Gamboa and killing an innocent bystander, Arthur “Afa” Folasa Ah Loo, in the process?

Nothing, according to Gamboa’s friend, Andy B. The Tribune is identifying him by his first name and the first letter of his surname because he fears online harassment, which he said another friend who spoke publicly about the case has experienced.

“I feel like [the safety volunteers] failed to de-escalate the situation, or at least get a read on what the situation was,” he said. “I think there was just this notion of like, ‘This is a tall dude. We can’t see his face and he’s got a gun. We should probably handle this.’”

“But,” he continued, “I think they acted too quickly and it resulted in a very horrible tragedy unfolding. He made a fatal mistake.”

Gamboa spent five days in jail without the option of bail before he was ultimately released Friday. As of Monday, prosecutors had not filed any formal charges against him or the self-described “peacekeeper” who Salt Lake City police said fired the gun.

Gamboa’s attorney, Greg Skordas, has said Gamboa’s rifle was not loaded and characterized those days spent in jail as a violation of Gamboa’s rights.

Skordas said Gamboa seemed shaken up after his release and reeling from his treatment in jail. He is afraid of going back, the defense attorney said, adding that Gamboa was kept tightly shackled whenever they met and remains in pain from the entry-exit bullet wound he suffered.

Even before his release, social media accounts linked to community activists, local punk music supporters and Gamboa’s friends had pleaded his innocence.

They also scrutinized the protest’s organizers, Utah 50501, who initially thanked its “safety volunteers” and police for their “quick response to the shooting” and “apprehending the suspect before he could injure more people.” The national 50501 group has since cut ties with the Salt Lake City branch.

And Gamboa’s supporters have pointed to high-vantage video that seems to contradict police, who wrote in a probable cause statement that Gamboa lifted his rifle into a firing position and ran into the protest crowd before the volunteer opened fire.

The video seems to instead show Gamboa with his weapon pointed toward the ground before shots rang out, which then prompted him to run, according to FOX 13, who spoke with the person who filmed it.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill has asked for “everyone’s patience” as police and prosecutors continue to investigate the case.

Punk rock as an outlet

While jailed, Gamboa spoke with Andy B. once for about 10 minutes. Gamboa told his friend he was still sore, like Skordas said, and Gamboa shared that he’d been feeling lonely, because he was detained alone in a higher-security cell.

“He just felt really kind of isolated, and he wasn’t really sure what to think,” the friend said.

Gamboa was also worried about money. He asked his friend to sell some of his belongings to add funds to his commissary, but Andy B. said that wasn’t necessary, because he and others had been collecting money for Gamboa online, in posts that described him as “kind-hearted, well-loved,” and “peaceful.”

Now that Gamboa has been released from jail, the friend said that money will go toward supporting Gamboa through any future legal proceedings.

The friends first met nearly 10 years ago at a Guitar Center. Andy B. recalled walking in with his mom and seeing a “big dude with a big, tall red mohawk” standing next to “this other guy with blue hair.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta be friends with these guys,’” he remembered.

The guy with the red mohawk was Gamboa, and that chance encounter sparked a long-lasting friendship and a handful of musical projects, like the punk band Rade, featured in SLUG Mag in 2021.

Gamboa told SLUG Mag at the time that he grew up seeing the unfair struggles his Venezuelan father faced, “working twice as hard to get half as far” as a non-white person in the “American system.” He turned to music to vent those frustrations.

“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 and anguish of poor people, of Black people, brown people,” he said, “of anybody who did not fit the idea of every man is created equal.”

Punk rock, Gamboa told SLUG, is a “more direct way of expressing failure in the current society.”

“It’s a way of releasing these angers and these frustrations,” Gamboa continued, “in a constructive way with the community, in a way that we can, you know, get together, dance and kind of form a stronger bond than just straight up music.”

A ‘very responsible’ gun owner, friend says

Andy B. and Gamboa lived together from around 2019 to 2022, so when crowds gathered en masse in 2020 to protest police violence in Salt Lake City, the pair often went together.

The friend said both were passionate about the cause — but Gamboa probably came off as more so.

“He’s a big personality,” the friend said.

It was sometime after the large May 30, 2020, protest in Salt Lake City — just after the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Bernardo Palacios-Carbajal in Salt Lake City — that Gamboa began to bring his rifle to the months of demonstrations that followed, the friend recalled.

“I’ve walked with him a few times armed as well. But every time that that had happened, there was never any problems, any pushback,” Andy B. said. “He’s a very responsible — very responsible — gun owner.”

Skordas echoed those sentiments Monday, saying Gamboa’s father taught the 24-year-old about guns and that Gamboa likes to carry one.

The friend said Gamboa carried his gun not only for personal protection “but a protection for other people, for other protesters, in case there was any sort of counterprotest where people may show up armed.”

Five years ago, police protesters were often met by other groups with guns, including the Proud Boys or Utah Citizens’ Alarm.

Gamboa became a fixture at those 2020 demonstrations, typically dressed in black, covering his face, carrying his rifle, sometimes leading the group of hundreds of marchers through the streets, said Jeanette Padilla Vega, a community advocate who founded the Food Justice Coalition and participated in many of the protests.

Though she didn’t speak with him back then, she learned soon after his June 14 arrest that Gamboa was the person she remembered marching alongside.

“None of us know him to be a violent person whatsoever,” Padilla Vega said.

“Unfortunately, I think one of the peacekeepers just acted too swiftly and made assumptions,” she said, “and the tragedy happened because of that.”

Padilla Vega, who was recently defeated in a crowded field vying for an open Democratic seat on the Salt Lake County Council, said at first, she wondered if Gamboa had bad intentions in bringing the gun to demonstrations.

“But he was always very calm, very peaceful. He never pointed [the rifle] at anybody. He never even raised it. And then, as he kept showing up,” Padilla Vega said, “I realized he’s definitely on the side of keeping peace.”

The day before Gamboa’s release, Utah 50501 organizers said in a statement they were “not able to comment on any of the speculation or questions asked by the public,” saying there’s “too much disinformation” and that the police investigation is ongoing.

The statement noted the group hoped to “address the community’s concerns in the near future.”

“Like so many in the community, we grieve the loss of Afa Ah Loo deeply. We hope everyone mourns his loss in a way that is respectful to his family and celebrates the impact he had on his loved, his friends, and his community,” the statement concluded.

‘All power to the people’

At one 2020 protest, on Aug. 22 of that year, Gamboa rallied with a group at the Capitol, calling on Gill to dismiss charges the district attorney’s office had filed against demonstrators who’d gathered about a month earlier, on July 9, 2020.

During that protest, some poured red paint outside Gill’s office, as a symbol of the blood they believed to be on Gill’s hands for not charging the Salt Lake City police officers who shot and killed Palacios-Carbajal. Others broke windows. A police officer and at least two demonstrators had to be treated at hospitals after a mid-street confrontation. At least eight people ended up facing felony charges.

Ahead of that August protest, after a few speakers, Gamboa grabbed a microphone with one hand — his phone in the other — and spoke of revolution.

“If you want to break down an engine, you don’t replace it with the same spare parts, put that same oil inside of it and put premium gasoline inside of it. No,” he said, “you fill that tank with sugar and let it break the f--- down.“

As he spoke, his black rifle hung from a strap, muzzle down, across his chest.

(Warning: This audio contains explicit language.)

Gamboa then demanded all protesters charged after various demonstrations over the prior year be exonerated. He also denounced Gill — the same prosecutor currently overseeing the decision on whether Gamboa will face charges in connection to the “No Kings” shooting.

“We demand the removal of all laws that infringe protesters’ rights, and we demand the immediate resignation of Sim Gill, and,” Gamboa continued at the time, “should he decide that he will not leave on his own accord, then, by the power of the people, he will be removed.”

Gill said Monday that prior to The Tribune asking, his office was unaware that Gamboa protested against Gill in 2020, and that a team would decide how (and whether) his office moves forward in filing charges in the case — the same process used for all death investigations.

“I don’t know who Mr. Gamboa is, and neither did anybody in our office,” Gill said. “We make our decisions based on the evidence and where we are, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Skordas said Monday that he doesn’t believe Gill’s office has treated Gamboa unfairly because of his protest background.

That August evening five years ago, Gamboa ended his speech by telling the crowd that they have power, and that if they unify, they can enact change.

“We’re going to keep fighting because they fought for us,” Gamboa said about his fellow demonstrators facing felony charges, “and we’re going to keep stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”

“All power to the people,” he called out

“All power to the people!” the crowd called back.

“I am,” he continued.

“I am!” the crowd responded.

“A revolutionary,” Gamboa said.

“A revolutionary!” they yelled back.

“And may we continue this fight, today, tomorrow, the next week, the next month, the next year,” Gamboa said, “until we gain our liberation.”

— Tribune political reporter Robert Gehrke contributed to this report.