Woman gets 5-year term for police car fires in 2020 protest

By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press

SEATTLE (AP) — A woman who torched five Seattle police cars during a tumultuous protest that heralded a summer of unrest after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison. Margaret Channon, 26, of Tacoma, used an aerosol can and a lighter as a makeshift flame-thrower to burn the unoccupied, parked police vehicles in downtown Seattle on May 30, soon after officers sprayed tear gas to disperse a massive crowd. Channon apologized, acknowledging that the Black Lives Matter movement does not condone illegal acts and that as a white woman it was not her place to coopt the cause.