ST. LOUIS - U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark on Tuesday sentenced a woman who tried to set fires at a St. Louis 7-Eleven during a 2020 protest to 27 months in prison.
On June 1, 2020, Nautica Turner took lighter fluid and began to pour it on the 7-Eleven located at 201 N. 17th Street in St. Louis as the store was being looted by numerous individuals, Turner admitted in a plea agreement in February.
After a man showed Turner a better technique for pouring the lighter fluid, she took the container back and continued trying to set the building on fire.
The man, Justin Cannamore, later set a fire in an aisle of the store, which was soon extinguished when a firework exploded in the same location. Turner took a thin cardboard box and unsuccessfully tried to restart the fire, before trying and failing to light a fire in a concrete trashcan outside the store, her plea agreement says.
A fire started by someone else later burned the store to the ground.
The looting came amid protests over the May 25, 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Turner, now 27, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit arson.
Cannamore, of St. Louis County, was sentenced to three years in prison in September.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation with assistance from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm and Explosives investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Ware prosecuted the case.