South Side man pleads guilty to torching Chicago police squad car during 2020 unrest
A South Side man pleaded guilty Thursday to a reduced federal charge for setting fire to a Chicago police SUV in the Loop while wearing a “Joker” clown mask during the chaos and looting that struck the city in 2020.
Timothy O’Donnell, 32, entered his plea to one count of interfering with law enforcement during the commission of civil disorder.
His 17-page plea agreement with prosecutors stated that preliminary sentencing guidelines call for between 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years on the reduced charge. He also agreed to pay $58,125 to the Chicago Police Department to cover the cost of the damaged vehicle.
O’Donnell had originally been charged with arson, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years behind bars.
During the virtual hearing, O’Donnell, who has been in custody since his arrest in June 2020, told U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood that he’s recovered from an earlier COVID-19 infection and currently taking methadone, a common drug for treatment of heroin addiction.
“I feel normal,” he told the judge.
The images of O’Donnell in the Joker mask with flames erupting behind him made him one of the highest-profile of the federal cases to stem from the chaos and looting that struck the city after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Prosecutors said that a downtown protest had grown violent on the afternoon of May 30, 2020, when O’Donnell was seen on video taken by a bystander approaching the police vehicle parked in the 200 block of North State Street, placing a cloth inside the gas tank and lighting it with a lighter.
Other individuals then “exacerbated the fire” by pouring accelerants on it, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Durkin said in court Thursday. The vehicle was destroyed, he said.
After the squad car burst into flames, O’Donnell was captured in a photograph provided by a different witness posing in front of the blaze, according to a criminal complaint filed at the time of O’Donnell’s arrest. Though his face was obscured by the grinning mask, O’Donnell’s distinctive neck tattoo reading “PRETTY” could clearly be seen in the photo, according to the complaint.
That image — as well as several others — were included in the charging document. Police found the mask in O’Donnell’s bedroom when they searched his apartment in the 700 block of West 19th Street, according to the complaint.
O’Donnell later admitted in an interview with law enforcement that he was the one seen in the mask igniting the blaze, the charges alleged.
His lawyer, Michael Leonard, had challenged that alleged statement in court, arguing that his right to a lawyer had been violated.
But when the judge asked O’Donnell on Thursday if it was true he’d ignited the blaze, he responded, “Yes, it is your honor.”
Wood set a sentencing hearing for June 14.
