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Fifth person charged with overturning police car during downtown riot

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People overturn a police car as they protest police brutality in Salt Lake City on, Saturday, May 30, 2020. Protesters joined others across the nation after George Floyd, a black man in Minnesota, died when a video showed an officer kneeling on his neck while he implored, “I can’t breathe.”

Ivy Ceballo, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Another person has been charged with turning over a police patrol car during the riot in downtown Salt Lake City, bringing the total number of people charged in the incident to seven.

Folau Ofakikolokakala Mafi, 26, of Salt Lake City, was charged Wednesday in 3rd District Court with criminal mischief, a first-degree felony, and rioting, a third-degree felony.

He joins four other co-defendants: Ian Eric Nightingale, 18, of South Jordan; Rhys Clementine Wisner, 21, of Midvale; Julie Mariam Yasima, 27, of Murray; and Connor Matthew Peebles, 21, of Belmont, Michigan, who were previously charged with the same crimes.

Mafi was one of at least eight people who pushed the police car over on May 30, according to charging documents. He was seen in videos throwing a beer can at the car when it was tipped onto its side, and then helped others push the car over onto its roof, the charges state.

Two men, Jackson Stuart Tamowski Patton, 26, and LaTroi Devon Newbins, 28, are charged in federal court with arson and accused of lighting the same police car on fire once it was turned over. Newins claimed in court Tuesday that he was trying to extinguish the fire.

An eighth person, Tamara Lynn Dixon, 35, was arrested for allegedly urinating on the overturned police car, as well as other crimes.