‘Utahns Mourn and Remember Victim at Site of Deadly Protest Shooting’

Two days after a shooting in downtown Salt Lake City claimed the life of beloved Samoan fashion designer Arthur “Afa” Folasa Ah Loo — more than 100 Utahns gathered at the same spot to reclaim it.

A hand drawn portrait of Afa smiling hangs above a ‘No Kings’ sign with the caption “father, husband, friend, fashion icon and friend.”

Bouquets of flowers, posters, handwritten cards and candles began to stack up in front of the Liberty Sky apartment building at 151 S State St. to honor Ah Loo, against a sign that served as a makeshift memorial.

The memorial sat inches away from where Ah Loo fell on Saturday evening, struck by a bullet during the “No Kings” protest.

Police said that Ah Loo was not the intended target of the gunshots, but was fatally wounded after a member of the protest’s “peacekeeping team ” fired three shots at another man, Arturo Gamboa, who police said was running into the crowd of protesters with a rifle drawn.

Richard Wolfgramm, a friend of Ah Loo’s, said he was with Ah Loo the day of the protest.

“I had no idea his life would be cut short like that,” Wolfgramm said Monday evening standing in front of the memorial. “It was completely senseless. It was such a tragic end to a beautiful event that we had on Saturday. I have never seen anything like that here in Utah.”

Wolfgramm said that he was standing in the middle of the street, taking a video of a large Mexican flag that Ah Loo encouraged him to capture, when he heard the gunshots go off.

“We were all cheering for that group that was coming through. I was shocked when I heard the gunshots,” Wolfgramm said.

He left and went to meet Ah Loo back by their car, but Ah Loo didn’t show. Wolfgramm texted everyone he knew that came with them that day.

“Everybody messaged back to me, telling me where they were, except for Afa,” he said. “I called him on my phone six times it says. I left him messages [saying] ‘Please text me back. I need to know where you are.’”

Someone encouraged him to look at the video he took to see if he could spot his friend.

“I went back and looked at my video, and he was on the ground. Dead. A bullet hole in his head,” Wolfgramm said.

Wolgramm said he and Ah Loo went to the protest because of what it stood for.

“Afa just became a citizen of this country a year ago, and so I think it was still fresh in his mind, the constitutional promises that are afforded to every single one of us who live on this occupied land,” he said.

Wolfgramm said that the “No Kings” protest was Ah Loo’s third march within a week — following the Utah Pride Parade and an immigration rally later in the week.

“This is the kind of person Afa Ah Loo was. He was a humanist. He saw the humanity in everybody, and it is so tragic that this is how his life ended,” Wolfgramm said.

Leanna Hansen, Ah Loo’s sister, was also present at the vigil but did not speak.

After Wolfgramm finished speaking, others shared their stories of the fear they experienced during Saturday night’s chaos.

Camryn Fife told The Salt Lake Tribune that she and her friends were at the protest on Saturday, but fled when they saw people scattering and heard the screams saying there was an active shooter.

On Monday, she came to the vigil with bags of flowers from a nearby Harmons for people to have a chance to add to the memorial.

Fife said she felt that she had to come back to this corner of downtown to “reclaim it” after such a sad event.

People sat in quiet reverence for the first hour of vigil — the only sounds the faint sobbing and the hum of traffic whirring past on State Street.

Wolfgramm ended his talk by saying that Ah Loo would be happy to see all the people gathered.

“If there’s anything that comes out of this tragic event, is that we all see each other and recognize each other as fellow human beings first, before it’s politics that are going on right now in this country, dividing all of us,” he said.