Utah’s leading civil rights group says the organizers of last month’s “No Kings” march in Salt Lake City had a responsibility to keep attendees safe, and that protesters and the public should be able to determine who is behind such demonstrations.
But more than a month after gunfire sent crowds scurrying from State Street, basic details behind the June 14 protest against President Donald Trump remain a mystery.
Who organized the protest on behalf of Utah 50501? Who fired the shot that ultimately killed 39-year-old Arthur Folasa Ah Loo? Who assembled the volunteers who watched over the thousands of marchers?
No one — not police, not prosecutors, not City Hall, not Utah 50501 — has answered those questions.
[See more: “No Kings” protest timeline.]
For American Civil Liberties Union of Utah spokesperson Aaron Welcher, the secrecy surrounding the protest’s planners undermines confidence in public demonstrations.
“We were trying to collect information at the start,” Welcher said this month. “... The local [50501 chapter] seems to be doing a very anonymous sort of planning, which goes to that whole safety and trust element, right? That is important for people — and not just looking at this organization — to know who is putting on protest rallies.”
Welcher added that transparency around organizers is important because the public should be able to consider who is staging a protest — and if they support their intended message — when weighing if they will attend.
“We are, of course, watching it, because anytime something happens at a protest, it’s important for us to watch,” Welcher said of the ongoing investigation of the shooting. “And especially, I think, overall the environment it creates, whether intentional or not, that it does create a sense of fear, and that does have an effect on people’s First Amendment rights.”
The city permit for the “No Kings” protest lists Micheal Andaman as the applicant, but no information about him exists online other than a faceless LinkedIn profile. The company listed on the application, meanwhile, was registered in Wyoming, where businesses can be created anonymously.
While the city did not vet Andaman’s identity, the city’s permit manager called the number listed on the application and said he spoke with a man. That contact information was redacted on a copy of the application obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune through a public records request.
Previous city communications and permits for Utah 50501 events, also acquired through a public records request, list two organizers who were not Andaman. The Tribune is not naming those two because they were not named in records associated with the June 14 protest and have not been accused of wrongdoing by authorities.
Organizers have also not responded to requests for comment sent to emails and social media accounts associated with Utah 50501. The national 50501 organization cut ties with the Salt Lake City branch five days after the shooting, and national organizers also have not responded to requests for comment.
Mary Corporon, a lawyer who purports to represent the Salt Lake City event’s organizers, has not identified her clients.
The safety team’s creation
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) An estimated 10,000 walk the streets of downtown Salt Lake City for a "No Kings" demonstration on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
Utah 50501 organizers had received increased threats ahead of the “No Kings” march but made no special plans to invite more than the usual number of volunteers who had carried arms at previous protests, according to Wendy Garvin, an activist who coordinated with the event’s planners and Salt Lake City police.
The threats, she said, included those of mass shootings and a driver plowing into protesters with a car. Salt Lake City Police Department spokesperson Brent Weisberg said there was “no credible information” indicating a threat of a mass shooting and that officers attempted to locate a driver who threatened the event, but license plate reader technology showed he had left the city.
Garvin added that about 40 minutes before the shooting, a protester told organizers that there were armed people, dressed in all black, inside a building on State Street.
She said she gave that information to police immediately and that they sent an officer to the building. Officers did not find anyone matching the description, another police spokesperson said, but members of 50501 notified one another of the potential threat, Garvin added.
The event’s armed volunteer squad, Garvin said, was made up of security professionals and veterans who had previously worked at demonstrations hosted by Utah March, Green Wave Utah and Armed Queers Salt Lake City.
“Honestly, it was a bunch of friends who liked to shoot,” Garvin said, “and genuinely never ever thought we’d have to use our guns in any sort of way like all this.”
The team planned for potential conflicts with de-escalation strategies that had been used at other events, Garvin said, such as ensuring volunteers approach and try to calm any arguments with protesters and counterprotesters.
Green Wave Utah declined to comment. Neither Utah March, which has lambasted Utah 50501 on Instagram for a “lack of transparency and accountability” in the wake of the shooting, nor Armed Queers Salt Lake City responded to requests for comment.
Shortly after the shooting, Armed Queers posted on an Instagram story saying the group had been asked two days before the event to join Utah 50501’s de-escalation team.
“We agreed to participate because the organizers were concerned about agitators, but we were given very few details and transparency about the de-escalation plan,” the group’s statement read. “Armed Queers was given very little information about this event or our role in it. We worked as a ‘Secondary De-escalation’ team and had no real interaction with agitators, or coordination with the event organizers while filling that role.”
No members of the Armed Queers group, according to the organization, were “wearing High Vis Vests, and No Armed Queers Members were part of any escalation of events.”
The group ended its statement saying its members grieved the killing of Ah Loo. “His life was unjustly cut short, and our hearts are with his family and his community.”
In its Instagram post criticizing Utah 50501, Utah March said it did “not condone gun violence of any kind” and that the shooting was “a tragedy that could have been avoided.”
Police prepared for guns
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Police search for a shooter during a "No Kings" demonstration in downtown Salt Lake City on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
During the protest, Garvin coordinated with Salt Lake City police Lt. Steve Wooldridge, who, according to public records, had worked previous Utah 50501 events and kept in touch with the applicant listed on the organization’s previous permits.
The June 14 protest permit filed with the city indicated organizers would not have hired security or off-duty officers patrolling the event. It made no mention of armed safety “volunteers.” For a Utah 50501 event held in March, according to city records, police were notified that the organization would have individuals on-site to provide medical assistance and “de-escalation” skills. The records did not mention if the individuals would be armed.
Salt Lake City Police Department Public Relations Sgt. Miles Southworth said even if police were informed about the armed safety team, “it’s not going to change a lot operationally,” since police have contingencies “for everything” in an event of this size – including that protesters would be armed.
“We’re in the U.S. — any demonstration, we’ve got people that are concealed carrying, people open carrying oftentimes,” Southworth said. “It’s not unusual for guns to be a part of a demonstration in Utah in particular.”
The state Department of Public Safety had warned organizers against a peacekeeping team “when they first started doing this,” Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday during his monthly news conference. The governor said those warnings came months ago.
Corporon sent a news release late Thursday that she said was written by three organizers. In the release, the organizers disputed Cox’s assertion, saying the governor was “grossly misinformed.”
“The organizers of Utah 50501 are not aware of anyone having such a conversation with DPS in which they were ‘warned’ against having a volunteer safety team at events,” the release states. “At no time did Utah 50501 request or require any safety and de-escalation volunteers to carry weapons.”
It is unclear whether the organizers behind the news release were the same people Cox referred to Thursday.
For her part, Garvin said this was not the first time “any of us had done this.”
“Most of us have been carrying because they (counterprotesters) always show up armed, and we’ve never drawn,” Garvin said. “We understand them pretty well and usually manage to just de-escalate them. But we had good reason to be carrying.”
The day of the protest
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd gives a briefing in downtown Salt Lake City on Saturday, June 14, 2025.
Three shots were fired by a safety team volunteer just before 8 p.m the night of the protest, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said.
The volunteer peacekeeper had seen a man carrying an assault-style rifle, Redd said, and when the man ran away, the volunteer fired his own weapon at him.
One bullet wounded the man, who was later identified as 24-year-old Arturo Gamboa. Another struck protester Ah Loo, who later died.
Gamboa was initially taken into custody immediately after the shooting but was later released. The volunteer who shot at Gamboa has not been identified but was cooperating with police, Redd said the day after the shooting.
Police have not accused the shooter of wrongdoing.
Detectives formally submitted their investigation of the shooting to the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office on July 2. No charges have been filed, and the investigation is ongoing.
— Tribune reporters Addy Baird and Brock Marchant contributed to this story.
Clarification • July 19, 12:09 p.m.: This story has been updated to clarify that Utah 5051 organizers did not alter their usual safety planning based on threats ahead of the “No Kings” protest, according to Wendy Garvin.