“Mr. Goonan is preparing his legal team and preparing his defense and will fight these charges,” he told KQED.
In an affidavit, FBI special agent Tiffany Speirs said she had probable cause to believe that Goonan “used several destructive devices — Molotov cocktails — to damage and destroy a parked University of California Police Department vehicle” during the early morning hours of June 1.
Security camera footage showed a person matching Goonan’s description exit the passenger side of a car with a license plate associated with them and set down a reusable shopping bag under the fuel tank area of a marked UCPD vehicle, Speirs said. A later search of the bag revealed that it contained six Molotov cocktails or improvised explosives.
Shortly after, a witness reported to UCPD that they had seen a person “use a blow torch style lighter” to ignite an object near the rear tire of a police car.
On June 4, law enforcement officials said they found the suspect vehicle outside the Pleasant Hill home where Goonan’s mother lives.
Three other arson attacks were included in the state charges, which have since been dropped. Cal Fire spokesperson Kara Garrett said that she could not elaborate on the details of the other attacks, 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.
Speirs’ affidavit notes that a blog post on “Abolition Media” from June 2 declares that the firebombing was done in retaliation against UCPD and the University of California. The post specifically references an “attack on students yesterday on a different campus” related to a pro-Palestinian protest. On May 31, about 80 protesters at UC Santa Cruz were arrested.
“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,” the post reads.
The post included information that was not made public, Speirs said, leading her to believe it could only have been written by someone with “intimate knowledge of the attack … likely either [Goonan] or the driver of the suspect vehicle.”
Wozniak said Thursday that he has seen no evidence connecting Goonan to the statements.
“Mr. Goonan has his political beliefs, those have been well established. He believes in a free Palestine, he was against the ongoing genocide, but those beliefs do not make him guilty of these charges,” he told KQED on Thursday.
Goonan is expected to appear in court again on July 18.
