TWO ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH CHASE BANK FIRE
Business burned down during the La Mesa riot in May
LA MESA
Two men have been arrested in connection with a fire that destroyed a downtown La Mesa bank after protests in the East County city devolved in looting and arson in late May, authorities announced Tuesday.
Investigators arrested Alexander Jacob King, 19, and Ricky Bernard Cooper, 33, on Monday, according to a joint statement issued by the FBI, La Mesa police and San Diego police.
Both men are accused of arson in the fire at Chase Bank, on Spring Street across from La Mesa City Hall and police headquarters.
King, taken into custody near his San Diego home, was booked on suspicion of felony arson and looting. Cooper was arrested on suspicion of felony arson and four separate counts of looting that occurred in downtown La Mesa on May 30 and May 31.
King remained jailed Tuesday in lieu of $50,000 bail. Cooper remained jailed in lieu of $115,000 bail.
The District Attorney’s Office is reviewing the cases to determine whether charges will be filed.
The May 30 melee in La Mesa, which continued into the next morning, followed an afternoon of demonstrations calling out policing bias and racial injustice in the aftermath of the death of George
Floyd, who died after a Minnesota police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
The protests in La Mesa were also a response to the a controversial arrest of a Black man near a trolley station there a few days earlier. Video of the incident — in which an officer can be seen repeatedly pushing the 23year-old man down onto a concrete bench — went viral.
Police decided later not to seek prosecution of the man. The officer involved in the incident is no longer on the police force.
The May 30 protest began about 2 p.m. outside the La Mesa police station. About 3:30 p.m., protesters marched onto nearby Interstate 8, past a line of California Highway Patrol officers. The CHP shut down freeway lanes.
Less than an hour later, about 1,000 protesters marched on Murray Drive and another 200 gathered in front of the police station, police said. The situation in front of the station became confrontational, with some people in the crowd throwing bottles and officers deploying tear gas and firing beanbag rounds to get them to disperse.
Some people began smashing windows and looting businesses. Some set small fires inside La Mesa’s City Hall. Later that evening, two banks across from the police station, including the Chase Bank, were burned to the ground.