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Letter: Flags at Utah Capitol and City Hall should fly at half mast to honor the memory of Afa Ah Loo

(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.

Gov. Cox and Mayor Mendenhall,

Thirty-nine-year-old Afa Ah Loo was shot and killed at the “No Kings” protest on June 14 in Salt Lake City. As a symbol of respect and as an aid to community mourning from this loss, this is to request that the state Capitol and Salt Lake City and County Building flags be set at half-mast for two days, beginning by the end of business on June 17 until the end of the business day on June 19.

Ah Loo was an innocent bystander exercising his peaceful right to assemble, and part of a crowd of 10,000 similarly nonviolent Utahns. Regardless of the political motivations of the rifleman, a core issue is the chilling of the community’s right of peaceful assembly. A unified governmental gesture that crosses political lines of lowering flags would bolster the community’s healing from the transgression of that right.

Given the national political divisions and the length remaining in the president’s term, more large protests in Utah are certain.

By lowering flags, you honor the memory of a fallen, ordinary Utahn caught in a divisive controversy of our times and reinforce that Utahns have the constitutional right of assembly free of fear of violence from any part of the political spectrum.

Kurt A. Fisher, Salt Lake City

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