South Side man sentenced to nearly 3 years in prison for torching Chicago police vehicle while wearing clown mask during 2020 unrest

A South Side man was sentenced Wednesday to 34 months in federal prison 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, 33, pleaded guilty in February to one count of interfering with law enforcement during the commission of civil disorder.

In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood said, “His actions undermined the peaceful protesters and led to a lot of confusion … about what is a legitimate protest, what is an illegitimate protest, put in danger the lives of legitimate protesters and put in danger the lives of law enforcement officers.”

During the sentencing, O’Donnell read with a shaky voice a prepared statement apologizing to the organizers of the peaceful protests, the residents of Chicago, his father and his mother, who he said is retiring early from Illinois State Police forensics because of his action’s impact on her reputation.

In a lengthy letter to the court ahead of sentencing, O’Donnell took responsibility for his actions and described himself as “a very passive (aggressive) person.”

“It was the most outlandish display of angst that I may have been harboring from various personal accounts of mental and physical abuse by law enforcement when I was either (traveling) or homeless,” the letter states.

The images of O’Donnell in the Joker mask with flames erupting behind him made him one of the highest-profile defendants in 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, according to prosecutors. The vehicle was destroyed.

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.