The last of a group of eight people charged federally in connection with the George Floyd protests in Downtown Pittsburgh in May 2020 was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for torching a police vehicle.
U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak imposed that term on Devin Montgomery, 27, of Carrick, after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States.
Montgomery was among a group of defendants indicted in July 2020 following the May 30 protests following Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.
A crowd marched in Downtown Pittsburgh that day and vandalized a marked Pittsburgh police vehicle on Centre Avenue, eventually setting it on fire.
Shortly after that, the crowd started walking down Washington Place toward a line of cops in riot gear. There was a brief standoff, after which the police decided to avoid a fight and left.
But they left an unmarked vehicle behind near Fifth Avenue and the entrance of PPG Paints Arena. The crowd descended onto it and vandalized it.
Video showed Montgomery, dressed in a Steelers football jersey, near the open rear passenger door. He and another man are seen holding and igniting objects they are holding. The other man threw a lit item into the back of the police vehicle, and Montgomery then did the same. The fire consumed the vehicle and destroyed it.
Police identified Montgomery by his shirt, his tattoos and his face when his mask fell down.
In a recorded jail call, prosecutors said, Montgomery told a friend that, “It’s just property damage, it’s not like I hurt someone.”
After the police car was torched, some of the crowd vandalized and looted businesses, and Montgomery was one of them. Video showed him and another person using rocks to smash the windows of a Dollar Bank on Smithfield Street and then enter the vestibule area of the bank.
In addition to the prison term, Montgomery will have to pay $25,635 in restitution for the damage he caused.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
