{"id":1250624,"date":"2022-01-28T11:08:03","date_gmt":"2022-01-28T16:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1250624"},"modified":"2022-01-28T11:08:10","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T16:08:10","slug":"man-who-burned-down-pawnshop-during-george-floyd-riots-killing-1-escapes-murder-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/man-who-burned-down-pawnshop-during-george-floyd-riots-killing-1-escapes-murder-charge\/","title":{"rendered":"Man Who Burned Down Pawnshop During George Floyd Riots, Killing 1, Escapes Murder Charge"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fman-who-burned-down-pawnshop-during-george-floyd-riots-killing-1-escapes-murder-charge%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1250624&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>After federal prosecutors requested a less harsh sentence for a man in Minneapolis who set a pawn shop afire during the George Floyd riots in 2020, causing one man to die, the fire-setter escaped a murder charge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMontez Terriel Lee, 26, pleaded guilty to a single count of arson and was sentenced earlier this month to 10 years in federal prison \u2014 much less than the 16 1\/2 to 20-year punishment outlined in the sentencing guidelines,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/prosecutors-win-light-sentence-for-man-who-set-deadly-fire-during-floyd-riots\">The Washington Examiner<\/a> noted.<\/p>\n<p>On May 28, 2020, Lee, wearing a mask, burned down the Max It Pawn Shop. Video showed him dousing the store by pouring liquid out from a metal container, then later holding up his fist as the person videotaping him says, \u201cOh s***, you really did it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A second video showed Lee standing in front of the burning pawnshop as someone asks him, &nbsp;\u201cWhat you do, Tez?\u201d Lee chortles, \u201cF*** this place. We\u2019re going to burn this b**** down!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The prosecutor\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/alphanews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Montez-Lee-Sentencing-Opinion.pdf\">sentencing documents<\/a> state, \u201cOn June 5, 2020, a man named Oscar Lee Stewart, 30, was reported missing to the Burnsville Police Department by his mother. Mr. Stewart\u2019s mother reported that she had not seen her son since May 28, 2020. Investigators learned that Mr. Stewart\u2019s vehicle had been found near the Max It Pawn. On July 20, 2020, authorities located Mr. Stewart\u2019s body in the rubble of the Max It Pawn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Examiner pointed out. \u201cThe Hennepin County Medical Examiner\u2019s Office attributed O.S.\u2019s death to \u2018probable inhalation of products of combustion and thermal injury (building fire),\u2019\u201d The U.S. Department of Justice <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-mn\/pr\/rochester-man-sentenced-10-years-prison-arson-minneapolis-pawn-shop-resulted-death-man\">stated<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the&nbsp;Examiner<em>, \u201c<\/em>It could have been tried as a capital case. Even if conduct isn\u2019t charged under the sentencing guidelines, any relevant conduct can be considered by the sentencing judge in fashioning an appropriate sentence. Any time there is a felony committed \u2014 and arson is a felony \u2014 and a death ensues, that\u2019s homicide. \u2026 It doesn\u2019t matter that just the arson was charged because someone died as a result. It\u2019s a murder case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Acting U.S. Attorney W. Anders Folk and Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Calhoun-Lopez signed a sentencing memo in which Lee was lauded for his \u201ccandor.\u201d The prosecutors contended that Lee did not commit the act for personal gain and it was a commercial building, thus his sentence should be gentler. &nbsp;They called his raising of his fist \u201cterribly misguided\u201d and labeled his actions as having tragic, unthinkable consequences,\u201d but cited Dr. Martin Luther King, saying Lee \u201c[appeared] to believe that he was, in Dr. King\u2019s eloquent words, engaging in \u2018the language of the unheard.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge Wilhelmina Wright told Lee, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.postbulletin.com\/news\/local\/rochester-man-sentenced-to-federal-prison-for-minneapolis-arson-that-killed-another-man\">Post Bulletin<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>You are more than the person who celebrated your actions on social media as if there was anything worth celebrating. You are more than the person that destroyed that business by fire. You are more than the person who set that fire that killed a man. And no matter how upset you may have been and you may currently be, you are alive today. You have a future. The victim of that fire does not. So while there are no excuses for your actions on May 28, 2020, you have a chance to move forward and live a productive life. You have a chance to move forward and contribute to a better life for yourself, to a better life for those that you love and to a better life for others. I hope that you use your prison term to address the struggles that you have, Mr. Lee, and to commit to treating and working through your depression, your anxiety, your PTSD and I hope that you also realize how your actions impact others.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After federal prosecutors requested a less harsh sentence for a man in Minneapolis who set a pawn shop afire during the George Floyd riots in 2020, causing one man to die, the fire-setter escaped a murder charge. \u201cMontez Terriel Lee, 26, pleaded guilty to a single count of arson and was sentenced earlier this month &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1250624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}