Support Arturo Gamboa An Antiracist accused of murder
(photo of Arturo in a leather jacket smiling outside)
Write to him at
Arturo Gamboa 457904
c/o Salt Lake County Metro Jail
3415 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.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours ago

      He ducks after you hear a round get fired. If someone is shooting at me, I run the fuck away and duck.

      And he pulled the rifle towards his chest (not raising it) to stay balanced so he can run the fuck away from the guy who actually was shooting at him.

      • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        OK, let’s put him aside totally for a moment. I want to know if you would leave a protest, grab a weapon you had hidden, and return to the protest?

        • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          19 hours ago

          I think hidden has a strong implication is that he didn’t want it seen.

          It sounds like it was in a bag, which to me is a valid way to carry a heavy item until he got to where he was going to practice the completely legal and allowed open-carry.

          It’s like saying my laptop is hidden because I keep it in my backpack and take it out when I get to a coffee shop.

        • Chakravanti@monero.town
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          20 hours ago

          Yeah, you’re fucking close to nailing by misleading and misdirection to support the acception of the thorough and complete death of all of the Declaration.

          I warned you.

            • Chakravanti@monero.town
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              20 hours ago

              Well, I did warn you. I’d say good luck, but there such thing when gaming to trick the mind of the masses.

              You gonna wish you could suicide.

                • Chakravanti@monero.town
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                  19 hours ago

                  If I was talking, you wouldn’t know anyway. There’s no real sound here. I can’t read your charactaristicly intended miswritten word’s reference to what’s being written. This ain’t no bible here.

                  You gotta help me, I can’t understand you. Just tell me where you really stand.

                  • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    19 hours ago

                    It’s not the Lip Bisquick’s affiliation to know. Who among us isn’t some kind of raking in the possible gerbil water anyway?

                    It’s like they say, you either plumb bob or you’re astute.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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      1 day ago

      While people are pointing guns at him, and potentially already shooting him. Anyone would panic in that situation. Fact of the matter is that he was perfectly peaceful until someone escalated massively.

      • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        24 hours ago

        That situation is one of his own creation. He wasn’t marching with his weapon, he hid it and only pulled it out in the middle.

        Come on, man, you can’t tell me that that isn’t incredibly suspicious. If I saw someone do that at a protest, I would shoot them too. I’m not saying that the peacekeeper didn’t fuck up, he didn’t check his background, but his actions were definitely reasonable, given the situation.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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          24 hours ago

          I think their only mistake is going to a lib march when plenty of anarchists warned others to stay far away from it. I also think what you’re doing is victim blaming.

          • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            24 hours ago

            Except he isn’t a victim. He made a conscious choice to do something that a reasonable person would use force to stop. He wasn’t “peacefully” walking, like the OP suggests. He went behind a wall and reappeared with a long rifle. That’s the kind of thing right-wing terrorists would do.

        • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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          24 hours ago

          ??? 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.

          • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            15 hours 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.

        • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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          23 hours ago

          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.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
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            20 hours 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.

          • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            23 hours ago

            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.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              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?

              • _cryptagion [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                22 hours ago

                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.

            • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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              23 hours ago

              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.