Tacoma woman sentenced for burning Seattle Police cars during George Floyd protest
A Tacoma woman was sentenced Tuesday in federal court for setting fire to five police vehicles in May 2020 during protests in downtown Seattle after the death of George Floyd.
Margaret Aislinn Channon, 26, was sentenced to five years in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington announced. She pleaded guilty to arson in September.
Federal authorities said Channon burned Seattle Police Department vehicles parked near Sixth and Pine on May 30, 2020, during racial justice demonstrations that swept the nation. At her sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said the woman’s actions did “tremendous damage” to Black Lives Matter in Seattle.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors agreed on recommending the five year sentence as part of a plea deal. In a letter to the court, Channon said she takes responsibility for her charges, and she apologized for what she did.
“Black Lives Matter is an organization with leadership that does not condone illegal activity,” Channon wrote. “I apologize to the many workers and activists — who have given decades of their lives to building a countermeasure to police violence — that did not want to see fire in June of 2020.”
Channon’s attorneys wrote that her decisions were a “seriously misguided attempt to effect positive change.” The attorneys included a photo that they said showed her protesting peacefully in downtown Seattle the day before she set fire to the police cars.
In a news release, U.S. Attorney Nick Brown said Channon risked the safety of everyone around her at the protests and that her actions undermined the message of peaceful protesters.
Channon was seen on video using an aerosol can as a blowtorch to light the vehicles on fire, according to records filed in the case.
Prosecutors said she was also seen entering various stores and stealing clothing. Channon admitted to smashing the window of a Verizon store and entering a sandwich shop where she destroyed a cash register.
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors noted that hundreds of people were standing near the cars she burned, and that all of them were in harms way if one had exploded.
“This case is an example of the FBI’s commitment to investigating domestic terrorism cases, no matter what their motivations may be,” said Donald Voiret, Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle Field Office. “The FBI believes in the peaceful expression of free speech, and Channon committed acts of violence and destruction, endangered other people, and distracted from and escalated demonstrations.”
Channon was arrested June 11, 2020 at her Tacoma residence following an investigation by the FBI, ATF and Seattle police.
Officers seized clothing and accessories at her home which appeared in some of the arson videos. Investigators were able to identify the woman based on her clothing and tattoos seen in the video and from her social media accounts.
This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 11:28 AM.
