Brooklyn residents plead guilty to federal arson charges for lighting empty NYPD van on fire during 2020 protest
Two Brooklyn residents pleaded guilty to arson charges Wednesday for torching an empty NYPD van in Greenwich Village during a criminal justice reform demonstration last year.
Elaine Carberry, 37, and Corey Smith, 24, were hit with conspiring to commit arson for their role in the July 15, 2020, van fire near the corner of 12th St. and University Place. The torching came amid a wave of protests around the city and across the country sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“Amid (a) transnational outcry in defense of Black life — outcry met with brutal and escalating police violence — I conspired to commit arson,” Carberry said during her plea.
She admitted igniting an object she found on the street, and hurling it into a parked, and empty, homeless outreach van. She also admitted using a flammable substance in her handbag to maximize the flames.
“It was an emotional act with a great depth of negative consequence,” Canberry said in court. “I could have moved differently that night, I wish that I had.”
Corey Smith, 25, who uses the pronoun “they,” pleaded guilty to the same charge.
“During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, I agreed with others to cause damage to a parked, empty NYPD van in New York,” Smith said in court.
“My judgment was rooted in passion for the continued murder of Black people by the police.”
Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Liman interrupted Smith during the plea to ask, “Did you know that it was wrong and illegal?”
“I knew that it was illegal,” Smith responded.
An undercover cop identified the pair after looking at video footage of the arson, prosecutors said at the time. The video showed Smith carrying a Patron tequila bottle as they walked toward the van with Carberry.
As flames began to burn around the van, the pair walked away, prosecutors charged. The couple returned minutes later and “a larger fire appeared to ignite at or around the NYPD van,” prosecutors wrote. The Patron bottle was found inside the van.
Carberry is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 5, 2022; Smith’s sentencing follows on Jan. 11. They face a minimum of five and max of 20 years in prison.
