An armed volunteer was charged on Wednesday over his role in a June shooting at a “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City that killed a fashion designer who had competed on “Project Runway.”
The Salt Lake County district attorney, Sim Gill, said on Wednesday that he had charged Matthew Scott Alder, 43, with one count of manslaughter, a second-degree felony. Mr. Alder was assisting with crowd control at the “No Kings” rally on June 14 when he tried to confront a man who was carrying an AR-15 style rifle. In the process, he shot the armed man and an unarmed bystander, prosecutors said.
The fashion designer, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, appeared on Season 17 of “Project Runway” in 2019 and helped style celebrities for the red carpet. Mr. Ah Loo lived in Utah with his wife and two children.
Laura Ah Loo, Mr. Ah Loo’s widow, said during a news conference on Wednesday that the wait for accountability in her husband’s death had been “long, painful and deeply frustrating.” She said the manslaughter charge filed against Mr. Alder was “both moral and just.”
“Today’s charges represent a significant first step in the right direction and establish a precedent that I hope leads to a safer environment at public gatherings in the future,” she said.
If convicted, Mr. Alder faces up to 15 years in prison. A lawyer for Mr. Alder did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
The police had initially arrested the man with the rifle, Arturo Gamboa, 24, in connection with Mr. Ah Loo’s death. The authorities found Mr. Gamboa near the site of the shooting with blood on his hands, a wound in his abdomen and a disassembled AR-15 rifle in his backpack. He was wearing all black and had three loaded rifle magazines in his cargo pants.
One witness, another member of the event’s safety team, became concerned after seeing Mr. Gamboa assemble a rifle and believed he was about to commit a mass shooting, according to court documents. The witness told detectives that they and Mr. Alder began yelling at Mr. Gamboa to drop his gun.
Mr. Alder told investigators that he had seen Mr. Gamboa “psyching himself up” and hunched down in “combat mode” as he assembled his rifle against a wall near the site of the protest, according to court documents. Mr. Alder told investigators he was thinking “this is really bad — somebody’s going to get hurt.”
After firing one shot toward Mr. Gamboa, Mr. Alder yelled at him to “get on the ground.” He then fired two more shots at him, thinking, “Don’t let me have to fire, but I want people to be as safe as I can,” Mr. Alder told investigators.
The first two shots Mr. Alder fired hit Mr. Gamboa and the hand guard of his rifle, according to court documents. The third shot struck Mr. Ah Loo as he was filming the protest. Mr. Ah Loo was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Prosecutors declined to file charges against Mr. Gamboa, despite “what could reasonably be perceived as alarming and irresponsible conduct,” because Utah open-carry laws allowed him to have the rifle at the event, according to court documents.
“Because of the man in black, I was concerned for the lives of everyone around me,” one witness told investigators, referring to Mr. Gamboa’s outfit, according to the court documents. The witness added, “The guy that shot the gun didn’t scare me.”
Mr. Alder was one of several armed people on the safety team at the protest, according to court documents. His team was responsible for medical care, crowd management and de-escalation.
Utah law allows civilians to use lethal force in situations where they reasonably believe that it is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury. That law, combined with the state’s relaxed concealed- and open-carry laws, resulted in a far more “nuanced” investigation, Mr. Gill said during a news conference on Wednesday.
“While you may have the right to use lethal force, that doesn’t mean that lethal force can be used in a reckless manner,” Mr. Gill said.
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
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