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Two more people — the 8th and 9th — charged with vandalizing police car during downtown riot

SHARE Two more people — the 8th and 9th — charged with vandalizing police car during downtown riot
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People stand beside a damaged 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 at the hands of police on Memorial Day.

Ivy Ceballo, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Two more people were charged Tuesday in connection with vandalizing and flipping over a Salt Lake police patrol car during the riot in downtown Salt Lake on May 30.

Bobby Joe Seti Masina, 24, of Salt Lake City, and MJ Imani Powell, 21, of Draper, were charged in 3rd District Court with criminal mischief, a first-degree felony, and rioting, a third-degree felony.

A total of nine people have now been charged in state court in connection with the police car incident.

Similar charges have also been filed against: Monico Isidro Romero, 31; Connor Matthew Peebles, 21; Ian Eric Nightingale, 18; Rhys Clementine Wisner, 21; Julie Mariam Yasima, 27; Folau Ofakikolokakala Mafi, 27; Kouver Kenneth Bingham, 32; and Monico Isidro Romero, 31.

On May 30, as a Salt Lake police officer was responding to work, she was stopped by a large crowd of people protesting at 210 E. 400 South. The crowd surrounded the officer’s marked patrol car, and other officers had to rescue her out of the crowd and leave the vehicle.

Members of the crowd then broke out the windows of the police car, overturned the vehicle, kicked and jumped on the top of the car and lit it on fire, according to charging documents.

Two men, Jackson Stuart Tamowski Patton, 26, and LaTroi Devon Newbins, 28, were charged in federal court with arson for allegedly setting the fire.