A 24-year-old California man was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $5,200 in restitution for throwing a Molotov cocktail at the East Valley Republican Women Federated (EVRWF) office in La Quinta, the US Department of Justice announced.
On March 15th, Carlos Espriu of Palm Desert had pleaded guilty to attempted arson of a building. In the May 2020 incident for which he pled guilty, Espriu broke the windows of the storefront offices of the EVRWF. While wearing a mask, Espriu threw lit three bottles he taped together through the broken windows. The bottles failed to break, so he picked them up and threw them in again. They failed to catch fire the second time.
For his third attempt, Espriu took the bottles out of view of a security camera. After he returned, he had taken off his mask and threw the bottles into the office again, this time with them breaking and setting the office on fire.