Man arrested in Colorado charged in Minneapolis police fire

A Minnesota man arrested in Colorado has been charged on suspicion of setting some of the fires that destroyed a Minneapolis police station on a night when protests over the death of George Floyd turned violent.

Dylan Shakespeare Robinson, 22, appeared briefly in federal court in Denver by video on Tuesday to be advised of the aiding and abetting of arson charge filed against him. He was arrested Sunday in the parking lot of the recreation center in the ski resort community of Breckenridge by the U.S. Marshals and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Investigators initially traced him to the Denver area.

Robinson is represented by assistant federal defender Edward Harris, whose office does not comment on cases. He will be kept in custody at least until a detention hearing is held on Friday.

According to the criminal complaint, Robinson is suspected of lighting a Molotov cocktail that was thrown by another person into the police station on May 28 as he stood nearby and throwing another incendiary device into the building himself. He is also accused of setting another fire inside the station that night, which was allegedly captured in a video posted on Facebook. According to the document, a video posted on Robinson’s Snapchat account showed at least one person who appeared to be making a Molotov cocktail while others discussed how to do it and someone objected to making one.

A mother of a former classmate at a school in the Brainerd area identified him as one of the arson suspects shown in surveillance video images released by authorities, according to the complaint. The document also said that Robinson is on probation for possessing hallucinogens and had told his probation officer he wanted to move to Denver.

Last week, Branden Michael Wolfe, 23, of St. Paul was charged with aiding and abetting arson in connection with the police station fires. According to the criminal complaint, Wolfe was arrested June 3 a few blocks from a Menards home improvement store in St. Paul where he was fired earlier in the day from his job as a security guard. He was wearing body armor with his name written on duct tape on the back, a police utility belt and carrying a baton as he tried to get into the store, the complaint said.