Texas man, 24, admits shooting at Minneapolis police station during riot
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A man who had been part of a far-right group that wants to foment a civil war admitted in federal court Thursday he traveled to Minneapolis from the San Antonio area to sow chaos after the police murder of George Floyd.
Ivan Harrison Hunter, 24, of Boerne, Texas, pleaded guilty to a single count of rioting. The charge carries a maximum prison term of five years.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter said sentencing guidelines call for Hunter to serve between 37 and 46 months in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Michael Davis said he would schedule a sentencing hearing following a standard pre-sentence investigation.
Hunter admitted that he fired 13 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle into the 3rd precinct police station on May 28, 2020, as other rioters looted and set fire to the building after police evacuated. No one was struck by the gunfire.
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After shooting at the building, Hunter was recorded on video high-fiving another person and yelling "Justice for Floyd!" Investigators matched the skull mask Hunter was wearing in the video to a photo on his Facebook page.
Prosecutors say Hunter came to Minneapolis in the days following Floyd’s murder after corresponding on Facebook with Michael Solomon of New Brighton, Minn., and Benjamin Teeter of Hampstead, N.C. The men had been part of the “Boogaloo Bois,” a group that exploits tensions to further violence.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the group presents itself as libertarian and race-blind and calls for armed insurrection against what they see as government tyranny. But the SPLC says the Boogaloo Bois’ origins are violently racist. The group emerged online early in the last decade, and “boogaloo” was associated with a call for a race war. The term is often used by white nationalists and those seeking to generate chaos.
In court documents, investigators say Hunter communicated with Steven Carrillo, a California Boogaloo member charged with killing a federal officer and a sheriff’s deputy.
Solomon and Teeter pleaded guilty previously to supporting a foreign terrorist organization after they offered to sell weapons to an FBI informant posing as a member of Hamas.