Who is Carlos Espriu? Palm Desert man arrested for firebombing GOP women’s club with Molotov cocktails
A Palm Desert man was charged on September 10 for arson that occurred in May 2020 at the East Valley Republican Women Federated building in La Quinta. Carlos Espriu was arrested around 6.30 pm on September 9, by the members of the Riverside County Gang Impact Team supervised by the DA’s Bureau of Investigation, according to the Office of The District Attorney County of Riverside.
Who is Carlos Espriu and why did he attempt to spark a blaze at the women’s club?
Espriu is a 23-year-old man from Palm Desert, California. He’s currently booked at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside with a $1,000,000 bond. He’s charged by the DA’s office with “one count of arson of a structure during a state of emergency with an enhancement of using a device designed to accelerate a fire or delay ignition, and one count of igniting a destructive device with the intent to destroy property," state official reports. The US Attorney’s office, on September 10, charged Espriu in a federal criminal complaint. DA’s Special Activity Unit along with the Gang Impact Team arrested him on September 9 when he was driving back from a party in Indigo. He’s scheduled to appear in the US District Court in Riverside on September 11.
While no other details regarding Espriu have been revealed, the cops said that only days before the incident, he had allegedly posted in Twitter, “I wanna go burn s—t n get hit with tear gas”. The women’s club offered a $1000 reward for his capture, but he reportedly evaded the police for months. He was later caught in an audio recording where he was allegedly telling a woman that “ he knew that he had shaved his head after authorities circulated the surveillance video.” He reportedly even described the three bottles he used in the attack, to the woman.
Details of the incident
A fire was allegedly reported around 1.30 am on May 31, 2020, at the building in the 78000 block of Highway 111 in La Quinta. Arson investigators established that the fire was set intentionally. They also found three glass bottles containing gasoline, on which one was broken and the other two remained intact.
According to Desert Sun reports based on the federal complaint, Espriu allegedly used a metal baseball bat to smash the windows of the structure and then threw 3 Molotov cocktails, which were ignited using a lighter, which was reportedly recovered at his residence in July by the investigators.
The cops have even started a GoFundMe page to raise funds to repair the damage, where they have shared a video that has caught his second attempt to set the building on fire. Authorities told that the fire incident took place at the time when Gov.Gavun Newson had ordered a state of emergency due to drought conditions across the state. Espriu is accused of committing the arson when the region was running short of water.
If convicted, Espriu could face a minimum sentence of 5 years in federal prison and a minimum of 15 years in the state prison.