this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Free Arturo (lemmynsfw.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Support Arturo Gamboa An Antiracist accused of murder(photo of Arturo in a leather jacket smiling outside)Write to him atArturo Gamboa 457904c/o Salt Lake County Metro Jail3415 S. 900 W. Salt Lake City, UT 84119

Arturo was providing community defense as he has been known to do for years.(still from a video with a red arrow pointing at Gamboa walking with a gun pointed at the ground and a yellow arrow pointing at "designated peacekeeper" pointing a gun at Gamboa, from a couple feet away)While walking with his gun pointing at the ground a 50501 marshall drew on him and opened fire, killing one bystander and injuring Arturo, yet Arturo is the one facing murder charges

The armed, yellow-vested "peacekeepers" at the Utah 50501 protest in Salt Lake City opened fire into a crowd, hitting two people:A Sāmoan fashion designer with two young kids, who died.A second-generation Venezuelan immigrant and antiracist protester who was legally carrying. Cops charged HIM.(photos of both the fashion designer (Afa Ah Loo) and Arturo below)

The yellow-vested "peacekeepers" at the Utah 50501 event also approached several protesters and asked them to remove their masks and keffiyehs because they looked "too aggressive"(image below of another post that says: Had one of those yellow vest people come up to me yesterday and ask me and my friends to take our masks off becasue it was suspicious. When we said we felt safter and would stay masked she then asked me to swap my keffiyeh for a normal mask because it was "too aggressive". I didn't obviously but wtf)

This morning, the national 50501 account posted a statement on Bluesky praising the actions of their "volunteer member of the protest safety team", calling the shooting victim a "depraved and disturbed domestic terrorist."They have since deleted their post and have not issued a followup statement(4 images from said account with proof. the visible portions of the images say: "any form of violence or advocacy of it. Our hearts go out to the protestors, attendees, residents of SLC, Pacifica community, and most importantly the victim's family as they mourn the loss of a beautiful life." "We're still gathering facts and are in contact with organizers on the ground. From our understanding, this was caused by a depraved and disturbed domestic terrorist who brandished an AR-15 and went into a crowd of peaceful protestors with an agenda to commit what we can only" "stop him, firing 3 rounds, striking the man and prventing a potential mass casualty event. In the process, he also hit an innocent bystander, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, better known as Afa, before rushing over to give him first aid. Afa later died from his injuries, and the man with the AR-" "Our hearts go out the protestors, attendees, residents of SLC, Pacifica community, and most importantly the victim's family as they mourn the loss of a beautiful life.")

Utah is a permitless carry state. SLC has an open carry ordinance, and protests frequently see AR-15s being carried openly.This environment makes threat assessment more challenging, which is why having armed "security" volunteers who lack extensive training is an incredibly reckless idea.(link to a 2020 article from The Guardian titled "The birth of a militia: how an armed group polices Black Lives Matter protests." The link preview text showing an excerpt from that article says: "In Utah, members of a militia claim their presence deters protesters from becoming ..."

Utah antiracist activists say that Gamboa (the young Venezuelan-American activist who was one of the two shooting victims) has been a fixture at local rallies, has open-carried his AR-15 before, and has never been violent.The police are charging him with homicide despite him never firing a shot.(image of Gamboa doing a Black Power salute among a crowd of also-saluting antiracists)

KSL News Utah legal analyst Greg Skordas a defense attorney and former deputy DA says the recommended murder charge against Gamboa will be "difficult to charge never mind proescute."He says the DA will look at the actions of the "peacekeeper," and doubts his actions will be found "reasonable.(still from a KSL Investigates news clip of a a crowd walking by. The headline says: Murder Charge Could Be Difficult to Prove in Fatal Protest Shooting")

Two days after Salt Lake City Police released a one-sided statement suggesting an innocent man was a mass shooter while praising the actual killers, local news finally reports that police are investigating the "peacekeepers" who fired into the crowd.The killer's name is still not published.

source

Note, I'm neither American, nor heavily in that scene. I'm merely signal boosting what I feel is important information countering lib propaganda.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

https://hexbear.net/post/5279995

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

??? All I see is him ducking and running after presumedly getting shot at. Who wouldn't do that? Gonna wait for more evidence before I take such a hard stance like you have man sheesh.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah he’s obviously lying, he’s saying things happened then providing video that completely counters what he said. It’s just low effort rage bait.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Thanks.

I watched it several times in slow-mo. Seems to me like Arturo was walking towards the crowd before the peacekeeper fired, but he started running after the first shot in response to the shot. Looks like the barrel is down until shooting starts, at which point it goes up like 30° but still pointed at the ground. Video is quite blurry, from a distance, and doesn't show the lead-up or aftermath of the shooting.

Utah is an open-carry state and it doesn't seem like he was doing anything other than walking towards the protest with a gun, which is legal and expected behavior in that state.

But IMO Arturo is innocent until proven guilty, and if anything this is evidence that suggests his innocence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

This is correct. That said if you open carry you do so knowing any slight move can result in you being seen as threatening. It's a logical result of being armed and masked at a protest where a large part of the issue being protested is ice using unlawful force and authority while armed, masked and without any indicator that they are in fact police.

It's not victim blaming and it's not shooter advocating it's just saying this was both wildly foreseeable and incredibly unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It’s perfectly legal behavior to open carry at a protest. But walking behind a wall and pulling out a gun? That’s definitely not expected behavior. You can’t tell me you would expect that at a protest.

It’s also not legal or expected behavior to hide your weapon after you are involved in a shooting and try to blend in with a crowd. That’s not legal anywhere in the US.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Concealed carry is legal in SLC. If you’re carrying a concealed weapon at a peaceful protest and you realize that the “peacekeepers” are armed, you might want to be obviously also armed to deter escalation (as we’ve seen advised on lemmy a bunch lately). However, pulling a weapon out of your bag in the middle of a crowd is almost certainly going to scare someone, so it’s probably best to go off to the side, unpack it out of sight, and rejoin the group afterwards.

I’m not a gun owner, but this seems like a totally reasonable course of action to me. Am I missing something?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

However, pulling a weapon out of your bag in the middle of a crowd is almost certainly going to scare someone

Making it reasonable to shoot someone who does this. That's literally self defense, even if they fucked it up and shot someone else.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But he didn’t, he went off to the side behind a wall, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Those were your words, not mine. In fact, I think it's much more suspicious to hide and then pull out the weapon than it is to do it surrounded by people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I was saying that it’s reasonable to go behind the wall, because doing it in the middle of a crowd could scare someone. Why do you think it’s more suspicious to hide? It’s a pretty big gun, I imagine the process of removing it from his bag would either take serious gymnastics or involve the gun at some point having up to a 30 degree angle from the ground.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Why do I think hiding a gun at a protest, then sneaking away to pull it out is suspicious? Is that a serious question? Because I would think the answer would be pretty obvious.

Also, I'm curious what your thoughts were on his actions when you first read about the shooting at the protest versus now, and how that compares to your thoughts on the actions of the guy who assassinated the two democrats were when you first heard about it, vs now.

Did your opinion of the accused in either event change at all? If so, what new bit of information made you change your mind? Because the only new bit of information about this particular guy and what he did is that he's allegedly a leftist. It seems to me, reading this thread, that that's all it took for a lot of leftists to suddenly be very OK with what he did, and calling him the victim.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why do I think hiding a gun at a protest, then sneaking away to pull it out is suspicious? Is that a serious question? Because I would think the answer would be pretty obvious.

It’s honestly not. Can we go through the steps? Concealed carry is legal in SLC protests (and guns are scary and crowds are excitable, so there’s no need to raise alarm unnecessarily), peacefully and openly carrying weapons at a protest is a strategy to deter escalation of violence (and once you see the peacekeepers are armed, the benefit gained by not having a visible weapon around is gone), and dropping out of the crowd to do it lowers the likelihood of someone getting spooked during the unpacking. Those are the three parts of the situation I see from my perspective, which one(s) do you find problematic/which would you describe differently?

I’m pretty sure I read about it for the first time in this post, so I can’t help you there, but I was thinking it sounded iffy until I watched the video. The video makes him look totally unsuspicious to me.

I don’t think my thoughts on the assassin have changed (he’s seemed like a maga monster the whole time)- did I miss something about that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OK, let's do a little make believe here then. The same question, but you know for certain the person coming out of the alley is a right-wing MAGA chud. Does your answer change?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You mean I know they have committed politically motivated violence before or I know they’re a trump supporter?

The first one definitely changes my opinion. The second one doesn’t necessarily, it depends on how they handle themselves (most trump supporters I know are gun people, and there are way more wannabe tough guy trump supporters than there are people who commit political violence). The video doesn’t show something that looks like the rifleman is violent.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Ok, that’s actually what I wanted to hear. But keep in mind that, at the time this happened, the MAGA dude who assassinated two democrats was still at large, and the police had announced he intended to target the No Kings protests. On top of that, the fact that almost everyone expected (rightfully so, since it happened in several places), that there would be right-wing violence against protesters.

There were credible threats against the protests, and he still chose to show up with a concealed weapon, knowing both police and protestors would be on edge and fearful of their own safety. And so many people are now willing to just overlook that. That’s seriously problematic behavior.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But walking behind a wall and pulling out a gun? That’s definitely not expected behavior. You can’t tell me you would expect that at a protest.

?? I didn't see that? Is that what the cops said? Did anyone else say that?

It’s also not legal or expected behavior to hide your weapon after you are involved in a shooting and try to blend in with a crowd.

Again where does this come from? Would be suspicious if verifiable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

?? I didn't see that? Is that what the cops said? Did anyone else say that?

Yes, witnesses who were there. He did not have the gun, he left the protest route and returned with the gun. Somehow, that gun got into his hands in the middle of the protest.

Again where does this come from? Would be suspicious if verifiable.

This video shows him when he was caught. Another protestor noticed the gun in the backpack, said something, and a second protestor bravely snatched the bag away from him and alerted the police.

https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lbz1vf/someone_noticed_a_rifle_in_the_backpack_of_an_slc/