UC Berkeley Firebomb Suspect to Face Federal Charges Within Days, Attorney Says

The person accused of carrying out a string of arson attacks at UC Berkeley will be transferred to federal custody to face federal charges in the next week, according to their attorney.

Casey Robert Goonan, 34, was arrested in connection with four arson attacks — including the firebombing of a police vehicle — on the university’s campus last month. Pro-Palestinian activists have claimed responsibility for the attacks in online posts.

Goonan was initially charged in Alameda County with multiple counts of arson and the possession and use of destructive devices, according to a press release (PDF) from Cal Fire. On Tuesday, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said that the United States Office of the Attorney General had taken over prosecution of Goonan, though the details of the federal case are unknown because it is sealed.

“Mr. Goonan is aware of the federal charges and is ready to fight them, and is looking forward to their day in court,” Goonan’s attorney, Jeff Wozniak, told KQED.

Goonan, a Pleasant Hill resident, was also charged with vandalism and resisting arrest resulting in injury to an officer in connection with a separate incident in San Francisco last September. They appeared at a custody status hearing on Tuesday related to that case and were released by San Francisco Superior Court to face the federal charges, Wozniak said. A status hearing in the San Francisco case is scheduled for July 19.

The exact charges in the federal case will be unsealed when Goonan appears in federal court, which Wozniak expects to happen “by the end of this week or at the beginning of next week,” he said. In the meantime, he said, Goonan will be transferred from San Francisco custody to federal custody at Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail.

Goonan was originally arrested on June 17 in connection with the UC Berkeley arson attacks after an investigation led by the Office of the State Fire Marshal’s Arson and Bomb Unit, along with the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and university police, according to Cal Fire.

Cal Fire’s announcement of the charges last month did not elaborate on the details of the arson attacks aside from mentioning the firebombing of a UC Berkeley Police Department vehicle, but daily campus police logs report suspected arson at a construction site near the Dwinelle Annex on June 16 and two additional suspected arson attacks earlier in the month — outside Koshland Hall on June 13 and at the C.V. Starr East Asian Library on June 1.

Unidentified pro-Palestinian activists have claimed responsibility for the string of fires through anonymous posts on the website Indybay.com. A post published under the name “marilyn’s daughters” said they set the fire at the construction site near Dwinelle Annex as part of a weeklong effort “in retaliation for [University of California police]’s violent assaults on vulnerable student demonstrators,” citing incidents at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz.

The post also claimed responsibility for the firebombing of a UCPD vehicle; the “burning of dry grass hills,” similar to the arson described in a June 2 campus warning regarding the fire at the C.V. Starr library; and “torching a building on the perimeter of campus,” which fits the description of Koshland Hall.

Under the name “student intifada,” another post claimed responsibility for the fire shortly after midnight on June 13, though it did not identify the location. It said that the attack was in response to an altercation between campus officials and UCLA student protesters on June 10, referencing the arrest of a young woman with a megaphone that was caught on video and spread widely on social media. The post called on the UC system to “divest from Israel or face our wrath of revenge.”

On Tuesday, another fire was started on the roof of UC Berkeley’s Golden Bear Cafe, located at the end of the campus’ student center. University spokesperson Janet Gilmore said that UCPD detectives are investigating it as arson but that the “case does not appear to have any connection to the June arson series.”

KQED’s Rachael Myrow contributed to this report.