Minnesota man sentenced to 4 years in prison for role in setting ablaze a Minneapolis police precinct during Floyd protests
A Minnesota man was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay $12 million in restitution for his role in damaging a Minneapolis police station amid racial injustice protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd.
Dylan Shakespeare Robinson, 23, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiracy to commit arson for taking part in setting a police precinct in Minneapolis on fire on May 28, days after Floyd, a Black man, was pinned down and killed by a police officer, who is White.
Robinson was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison and two years of supervised release, according to a news release from the District of Minnesota’s US attorney’s office. He was also ordered to pay $12 million in restitution.
Robinson’s attorney has not responded to CNN’s request for comment.
According to the indictment, Robinson and others allegedly “worked together in furtherance of their common goal of damaging and destroying the Minneapolis Third Precinct building by fire.”
Robinson was accused of lighting an incendiary device that was held by another person who threw it toward the precinct “with the intent that it would start a fire or fuel an existing fire,” according to the criminal complaint.
Protesters set the Minneapolis police precinct on fire after pushing past a fence that was surrounding it and climbing up the building, CNN reported. The Minneapolis Police Department had evacuated the precinct, the director of the department’s Office of Public Information said at the time. There was no police present while the precinct burned, CNN reported.
Three other men, including Branden Michael Wolfe, have also pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit arson in connection to the fire at the Minneapolis police department’s Third Precinct. They will be sentenced at a later date, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota said.
Former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted April 20 on two counts of murder and a count of manslaughter in a Minnesota criminal court for killing Floyd. Chauvin was found to have used excessive and unreasonable force when he kneeled on Floyd’s neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, according to prosecutors. His sentencing is set for June 25.
