I wrote about this guy last summer when he was arrested. Casey Robert Goonan was connected to multiple acts of arson in the Oakland area. His first target, on June 1, 2024 was a Berkeley police SUV. He placed a bag of Molotov cocktails near the back wheel.
🚨🇵🇸✊🏼🇺🇲🔥🚓🔥
— 🇵🇸🇮🇪🔻☭Long Live James Connolly ✊🏼 (@tnega74) June 2, 2024
Around 4am on June 1 2024, an incendiary device was placed below a UC Berkeley police vehicle parked in front of UCPD station. The device was lit underneath the back left wheel of a police SUV, placed between the tire and underside of fuel tank. There were too many pic.twitter.com/4SmaMd1eEe
A claim of responsibility was posted on an anarchist site, connecting the arson to the "Student Intifada."
This act was done in retaliation against UCPD, for their attack on students yesterday on a different campus and to retaliate against the University of California for its support for the zionist israel settler colony. More specifically – this attempt to torch a police car in front of the university was in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings assaulted by the zionist state in Rafah. It came from a place of love for Palestine, and love for revolution and liberation of all oppressed people...
Blessed is the flame that burns down the settler-plantation.
Blessed are the rockets that will free thousands of prisoners held captive by the zionist settler entity and US colonizer police state.
May the spirit of Revolutionary Anti-colonialism unearth the truth from beneath these occupied lands.
Our heart will forever be tied to the fate of Rafah
Knife to the throat of zionism
Death to amerikkka
Glory to the martyrs
Ten days later he went to the U.S. Courthouse in Oakland with more Molotov cocktails. His plan was to throw them inside the building to start a fire but he was interrupted by security and wound up lighting them outside instead.
In the following week, Goonan set two more fires on the Berkeley campus. Another claim of responsibility was posted connecting the arson to the Student Intifada.
LONG LIVE THE STUDENT INTIFADA FOR PALESTINE LIBERATION
STOP THE GENOCIDE NOW
UC SYSTEM MUST DIVEST FROM ISRAEL OR FACE OUR WRATH OF REVENGE
Goonan was arrested a couple days after setting his 4th fire. In January, he pleaded guilty to federal arson charges. Yesterday he received a sentence of nearly 20 years in prison for his crimes.
Casey Robert Goonan was sentenced today to 235 months in federal prison for committing a series of arsons and firebombings at the University of California, Berkeley and the Oakland federal building in June 2024. Senior U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White handed down the sentence...
Goonan acknowledged that these attacks were inspired by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and that he called on others to attack property on Bay Area college campuses in support of Palestine. Goonan admitted that his conduct was designed to influence and affect the conduct of governments by intimidation and coercion and to retaliate against the governments of the United States and the State of California for their conduct...
At sentencing, the Court referred to Goonan as a “domestic terrorist” and found that he had committed a felony offense that involved or was intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.
In addition to the prison term, Judge White also ordered the defendant serve 15 years of supervised release after he is released from custody and ordered restitution in the amount of $94,267.51 and a $100 special assessment.
If you're wondering where Casey Goonan learned to write leftist agitprop, the answer is Northwestern University. Goonan, now 35-years-old, has a Ph.D in Black Studies from Northwestern.
Goonan graduated from Northwestern University in 2022 with a doctorate in African-American Studies, as previously reported by The College Fix. He lived at home with his parents in California in their $1.1 million house The San Francisco Standard previously reported. Reporting from The Daily Californian uses “they/them” pronouns, suggesting Goonan identifies as transgender.
Prior to attending Northwestern, Goonan graduated from University of California Riverside. One of his former professors recently praised Goonan, as reported by The Fix.
When you get a Ph.D. in Black Studies you wind up living with your parents at age 35 and trying to solve the world's problems with Molotov cocktails. His address for the next dozen or so years (he'll get time off for good behavior) should provide a big more structure. No doubt he'll write a book about "Amerikkka" in his copious free time.
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