Federal grand jury indicts alleged anti-Israel UC Berkeley arsonist and firebomber
A federal grand jury has indicted Casey Goonan, who’s accused of firebombing a University of California, Berkeley, police cruiser and setting fire to several areas of campus.
A federal grand jury has indicted Casey Goonan, who’s accused of firebombing a University of California, Berkeley, police cruiser and setting fire to several areas of campus.
Cal Fire announced on Monday the arrest of Casey Robert Goonan of Oakland, CA in connection with three arson attacks and the firebombing of a UC Berkeley Police Department vehicle in June.
Officials arrested Goonan and he was initially charged with felony counts of possession and use of destructive devices and multiple counts of arson.
Federal prosecutors picked up the case, and he was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday, according to the Jewish News of Northern California.
He was charged on one felony related to the June 1 firebombing of a UC Berkeley police cruiser and for carrying an unregistered weapon.
The state-level charges on for the other three alleged arson attacks were dropped because they did little damage.
On July 11, Goonan was again arrested after allegedly throwing rocks at a federal office building in Oakland while holding Molotov cocktails.
[RELATED: UC Berkeley arson suspect ‘considers himself a ‘scholar-activist,’ ‘abolitionist,’ and aspiring professor]
According to a letter signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nikhil Bhagat, Goonan was “intending to break a window and toss one or more lit devices into an interior office.”
When Goonan was seen by a security guard, he “placed the bag with Molotov cocktails inside a planter that abuts the 12th Street side of the building and lit it on fire before fleeing.”
A post by the name “Marilyn’s Daughters” on Indybay.org said that they set fire to a construction site at UC Berkeley in June, writing that it was the second phase of the “#Escalate movement.”
”phase two of the #Escalate movement heats up at u.c. berkeley with a construction site set on fire in broad daylight. this was done in retaliation for u.c.pd’s violent assaults on vulnerable student demonstrators and to punish the university of kkkalifornia system for supporting the genocidal zionist-Israel entity,” the group wrote. “this was an autonomous initiative in concert with the current WEEK OF ACTION currently underway: operation campus flood.”
The University of California, Berkeley Police Department wrote that a fire was reported at the Dwinelle Annex Construction Site, and an investigation determined it was arson.
One day after a “firebomb” was thrown at a UC Berkeley building that’s named after a Jewish professor on Thursday, another post was made, calling for “a week of autonomous action,” calling it “Operation Campus Flood,” which lasts from June 14 to June 19.
