Man arrested in La Mesa arson during May rioting

A 43-year-old Campo man was arrested Tuesday in connection with a fire that destroyed a historic building in downtown La Mesa when protests in the city devolved into looting and arson in late May, La Mesa police officials said.

Daniel Sandoval was jailed in lieu of $500,000 bail, arrested on suspicion of arson and felony vandalism for a fire that destroyed the Randall Lamb and Associates building, Lt. Greg Runge said.

Runge said the District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting the case and that no arraignment date has been set.

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 were also a response to the controversial arrest of a Black man near a trolley station in La Mesa a few days earlier. Video of the incident — in which an officer can be seen repeatedly pushing the 23-year-old man down onto a concrete bench — went viral. The officer is no longer on the police force.

The protests started the afternoon of May 30 outside the La Mesa police station. As hours passed, the situation became confrontational. Some in the crowd hurled bottles and officers deployed tear gas and fired beanbag rounds to get them to disperse.

After nightfall, some people shattered windows and looted nearby stores. By sunrise, fire had destroyed three buildings. One blaze gutted the building on Palm Avenue that houses Randall Lamb and Associates.

The building, which had been designated a historic structure by the La Mesa Historical Society, was a total loss, according to police.

Last month, police arrested two men they accused of setting fire to a Chase Bank.