By SAFIYAH RIDDLE, Associated Press

The 39-year-old man shot and killed at a weekend “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City was a successful fashion designer and former “Project Runway” contestant who devoted his life to celebrating artists from the Pacific Islands.

Arthur Folasa Ah Loo was killed when a man who was believed to be part of a peacekeeping team for the protest shot at a person brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, accidentally striking Ah Loo. Ah Loo later died at the hospital, authorities said.

Detectives don’t yet know why the alleged rifleman pulled out a weapon or ran from the peacekeepers, but they charged him with murder and accused him of creating the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo’s death, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said at a Sunday news conference.

Ah Loo leaves behind his wife and two young children, according to a GoFundMe for his family that raised over $100,000 in 48 hours.

The “self-taught” fashion designer born in Samoa, known to many as Afa, devoted his life to doing “the good things for his neighbors and community,” state Rep. Verona Mauga said.

Mauga was at the “No Kings Protest” a few blocks from where Ah Loo was shot. She said she only had a sense that something was wrong when she saw the crowd running.

As tragic as his death is, she said, Ah Loo would have been proud that his last moments were spent fighting for what he believed in.

“If Afa was going to go out any other way than natural causes, it would be standing up for marginalized and vulnerable communities and making sure that people had a voice,” Mauga told The Associated Press on Monday.

While he wasn’t typically overtly political, Ah Loo had a knack for connecting “culture and diversity and service,” and bringing people together, Mauga said.

Benjamin Powell, a hair salon innovator from Fiji, co-founded Create Pacific with Ah Loo shortly after they met four years ago. The organization uplifts artists from the Pacific Islands.

The two artists had a rare creative synergy, Powell said. Ah Loo’s vibrant work delicately weaves traditional Pacific Island attire with modern silhouettes and design. He used flowers indigenous to Samoa as motifs, and frequently incorporated the traditional Pacific Islander art called Tapa, a cloth traditionally made from tree bark, into the garments he made.

Powell admired the meticulous attention to detail that made Ah Loo’s work distinctive.

“You would know right away that it was an Ah Loo design,” Powell said.

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Ah Loo and Powell were working on an upcoming August fashion show when he died. Powell said “the show will continue” and honor Ah Loo’s unwavering vision for his community.

Ah Loo’s portfolio has earned numerous accolades over the years. He was a contestant in 2017 on Bravo’s “Project Runway,” a reality television show where fashion designers compete in front of celebrity judges to create runway looks on tight deadlines.

Recently, Ah Loo designed a garment for the star of the Disney Channel animated movie Moana 2, Hawaiian actor Auliʻi Cravalho.

Cravalho wore the outfit, which combined traditional and modern aesthetics from her culture, to the film’s red carpet premiere in Hawaii last November.

“This was the first time I was so active in helping to design a custom look, and Afa surpassed what I had envisioned,” Cravalho told the magazine at the time.

But not all of his work was high-profile, Mauga said.

Ah Loo would volunteer his time and resources to tailor clothing for people who needed help, often refusing to let people compensate him for his work, Mauga said. Sometimes, Ah Loo would playfully criticize the outfits the newly elected Democratic representative wore on the campaign trail, and invite her to his studio so he could make her a new set of blazers. He would also make her dresses for events, sometimes just on a couple of hours notice.

“Afa was so much a part of the community,” she said.

KINGMAN, Arizona — There is a roughly 8-mile section of Route 66 at the western edge of this state that is considered to be one of the most scenic and white-knuckled drives this country has to offer.

It’s known as the Arizona Sidewinder, or to locals, simply The Sidewinder.

Eastbound Route 66 leaves California and crosses the Colorado River into Arizona, where it unfurls like a ribbon of pavement approaching the Black Mountains. A Mohave County worker in a small plow truck cleaned debris from the previous night’s storm as the two-lane road ascended 2,700 feet to Oatman.

Route 66 winds and climbs through the Black Mountains near Oatman, Arizona, as seen June 4, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

Local lore says the town was named in honor of Olive Oatman, an Illinois woman whose family was killed by a Native American tribe in the area and who, the story goes, was eventually adopted and raised by a different tribe.

Gold brought the miners who eventually created Oatman, and those miners brought burros to haul rock, water and supplies. When the mines closed, the animals were released into the wild.

Several decades later, they’ve become a popular attraction in town. Shops sell approved pellets and warn visitors against feeding them carrots. On the outskirts, they can bring traffic to a standstill by congregating in the roadway and approaching the open windows of tourists hoping for a photo.

People meandered down Oatman’s main drag lined with shops selling T-shirts, Arizona honey and “real American turquoise.” At the center of the road, a group of maybe 50 converged to watch two men re-create a gunfight between “Outlaw Willie” and “Patton.” The outlaw lost — his second defeat of the day (the first being when his wireless microphone kept cutting out).

Willie (real name Rod Hall, 80) and Patton (Chris Marshman, 70) live in nearby Fort Mohave and have been performing for visitors for 31 years and 25 years, respectively. The gunfight, they say, raises money for Shriners International.

Exiting Oatman, Route 66 morphs into The Sidewinder. This serpentine portion of the road is reported to contain nearly 200 curves, many of them perched precariously on cliff edges absent guardrails. Travelers are warned not to attempt to navigate them in vehicles longer than 40 feet.

Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100

As the road climbed to Sitgreaves Pass, elevation 3,586 feet, the views from a scenic overlook were made more profound by the discovery of a make-shift cemetery with dozens of memorials to deceased loved ones whose cremations were scattered at the site.

Ginny died at the age of 95. Jeremy at 14.

About 25 miles east of Sitgreaves sits the city of Kingman, population 35,000. Outside the city’s railroad museum along its vibrant Route 66 corridor is a bronze statue to Jim Hinckley, an author, historian, tour guide, podcaster, consultant and raconteur.

“I wish they would have waited until I was dead,” joked Hinckley, 68, his face flushed with embarrassment under his wide-brimed cowboy hat. “It’s like attending my own funeral every time I come down here.”

Born on the North Carolina coast, Hinckley said his dad, a Navy and Coast Guard veteran, moved the family outside Kingman after throwing a dart at a paper map he folded to ensure it would land nowhere near water.

Route 66 expert, writer and consultant Jim Hinckley gives a tour of downtown Kingman, Arizona, stopping at a statue of himself along Route 66, on June 4, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

A professional path as winding as The Sidewinder — he’s been a rancher, a miner, a rodeo cowboy, a repo man, a truck driver and a mechanic — led him to writing, first about American automobile history and then Route 66.

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Hinckley helped curate a self-guided walking tour of the city’s historic district and provides audio narrations of the sites via a QR code on plaques. One tells the story of a former rodeo grounds on the route where, before the road was designated Route 66, the Chicago Cubs played two exhibition games: one in 1917 against a local team and the second in 1924 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“Pretty much everything in my life is tied to this road,” he said. “I learned to ride a bicycle, learned to drive on this. My early ranch work was on this road. Courting my wife was tied to this road. It’s the American experience made manifest. For me, it’s just the evolution of myself as well as this country.”

Read the fourth dispatch, a rainy day at the Hackberry General Store, here >>>

New Gophers men’s basketball coach Niko Medved has added a pair of guards to his roster. Maximus Gizzi and Max Lorenson will report this week to summer workouts.

Gizzi, a 6-foot, 1-inch graduate transfer from New Palestine, Ind., played at Huntington University, averaging 10 points and 3.7 assists a game for a team that finished No. 12 in the NAIA national rankings. He was the Crossroads League’s defensive player of the year.

Lorenson, a 6-foot, 2-inch freshman shooting guard finished as Eden Prairie’s fourth all-time leading scorer with 1,568 career points, averaging more than 26 points a game as a senior.

Soccer

Sarah Martin, a redshirt sophomore goalkeeper from Champlin, has been invited to participate in the inaugural Women’s College Talent ID Camp sponsored by U.S. Soccer June 18–22 in Atlanta. She is one of 14 Big Ten players, and the only Gophers player, invited to the camp aimed at expanding the U.S. under-18, under-19 and under-20 women’s national team player pools.

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City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.

The City Planning Commission will vote this week on the city’s rezoning plan for Midtown South. (Dept. of City Planning)

Welcome to City Limits’ NYC Housing Calendar, a weekly feature where we round up the latest housing and land use-related events and hearings, as well as upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.

Know of an event we should include in next week’s calendar? Email us.

Upcoming Housing and Land Use-Related Events:

Tuesday, June 17 at 9:30 a.m.: The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission will meet. More here.

Tuesday, June 17 at 1 p.m.: The NYC Council’s Committee on Children and Youth will meet regarding several bills, including one that could require the city to provide luggage to youth in the foster care system. More here.

Tuesday, June 17 at 5 p.m.: The Rent Guidelines Board, which is considering rent increases for tenants in stabilized apartments, will hold a public hearing in Manhattan. More here.

Wednesday, June 18 at 10 a.m.: The City Planning Commission will meet and vote on the following land use applications: Bally’s Ferry Point Map Amendment, 347 Flushing Ave., 236 Gold Street Rezoning, 47 Hall Street Rezoning, Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan (MSMX), and the 42-11 30th Avenue Rezoning. It will hold public hearings on the following projects: 5602-5604 Broadway Rezoning, JFK Conduit Logistics Center Demapping, 1946 East 7th Street Rezoning, 350 Park Avenue, and 515 7th Avenue. More here.

Wednesday, June 18 at 1 p.m.: The NYC Council’s General Welfare Committee will meet regarding several bills, including one that would require the city to report on supportive housing vacancies and another related to monitoring access to air conditioning in homeless shelters. More here.

Saturday, June 21, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Queens Neighborhood Services will host an in-person housing expo at the Queens Museum featuring information on programs and assistance for homeowners and renters. More here.

Monday, June 23, 5 to 8 p.m.: The New York City Charter Revision Commission, which is considering changes to city government rules around housing and land use, will hold a public input hearing on Staten Island. More here.

Monday, June 23, 6 to 8 p.m.: The city will hold a community design workshop around plans for the incoming borough-based jail in The Bronx. More here.

NYC Affordable Housing Lotteries Ending Soon: The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is closing lotteries on the following subsidized buildings over the next week.

Core NYC, Queens, for households earning between $68,400 – $227,500 (last day to apply is 6/16)

514 Maple Street Apartments, Brooklyn, for households earning between $90,858 – $261,170 (last day to apply is 6/16)

Kay’s Place, Brooklyn, for households earning between $48,823 – $160,720 (last day to apply is 6/17)

111 Willoughby Street Apartments, Brooklyn, for households earning between $101,143 – $227,500 (last day to apply is 6/26)

The post NYC Housing Calendar, June 16-23 appeared first on City Limits.