The man charged in a winter 2020 arson attack on Capitol Hill’s Queer/Bar has pleaded guilty to a hate crime, the United States Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Prosecutors say Kalvinn Garcia was driven by his anger over his homelessness and tried to set fire to the Pike/Pine gay bar in February, 2020.
Garcia picked his target, police say, when he saw the word “queer” on the building. The bar was full at 9 PM on a Monday night.
“Garcia stated he had just been kicked out of the place he was staying and was homeless,” the SPD report on his arrest reads. “He expressed that he does not like and blames the ‘fucking queers and fucking fairies’ for his situation.”
According to court documents, the blaze was set at approximately 9 PM in a large recycling dumpster next to the building — in an alleyway it shares with the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct. The flames leapt up the side of the building toward the second floor, where at least 50 people were attending an event while several customers were inside the club on the first floor.
SPD officers were dispatched and quickly located the suspect in the 1400 block of Broadway where he was apprehended after a short chase.
The brick exterior of the building was scorched and the fire resulted in the cancelation of events planned at the nightclub for several days but there were no reported injuries.
Garcia was originally charged in King County Superior Court with arson and a hate crime, but was released from jail due to COVID-19 restrictions.
A federal grand jury returned the arson indictment in January, 2021. He was transferred into federal custody after serving out a jail sentence for theft in Whatcom County.
Garcia, 24 at the time of the fire, is a Sedro Woolley resident but court records don’t reveal why he was in Seattle that February night.
While damage was limited, the fire echoes with another arson attack on a popular Capitol Hill venue at Neighbours on New Year’s Eve 2013. More than 700 people were partying to ring in 2014 when an arsonist set the iconic gay dance club on fire. No one was seriously injured thanks to fast acting staff and patrons who were able to douse the flames before they spread to the packed dance floor. Musab Masmari admitted to setting the fire inside the crowded club, blaming his actions on drinking too much alcohol. Police and FBI arrested Masmari following a month-long investigation into the New Year’s Eve arson.
Under a plea deal, the defendant did not face hate crime charges — though, according to the prosecution, a “confidential informant” told investigators that Masmari said homosexuals should be “exterminated.” In July of 2014, Judge Ricardo S. Martinez handed down a 10-year sentence in the case — twice the amount of time prosecutors and Masmari’s lawyers were asking for under the plea agreement.
This week, more than two years after he was arrested, the DOJ announced Garcia’s guilty plea in a deal that swapped the arson case for a federal hate crime charge.
On or about February 24,2020, at King County, within the Western District of Washington, KALVINN JAY GARCIA, through the use of fire, did attempt to willfully cause bodily injury to individuals inside a building, namely Queer/Bar, located at 1518 1lft Avenue, Seattle, because of the actual and perceived sexual orientation and gender identity of these individuals. In so doing, KALVINN JAY GARCIA interfered with the commercial and other economic activity in which the individuals inside Queer/Bar were engaged at the time of the conduct and otherwise affected interstate and foreign commerce.
“The defendant targeted the patrons inside Queer/Bar, a known safe space for the LGBTQI+ community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the announcement. “Hate crimes have no place in our society today and we stand ready to use our federal civil rights laws to hold perpetrators accountable. All people deserve to feel safe and secure living in their communities, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Garcia faces now faces a sentence of up to ten years of imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing in front of U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour is scheduled for September.
Queer/Bar, meanwhile, has also been recently targeted by a religious group with loudspeaker harassment and provocation that sparked this pepper spray melee outside the 11th Ave venue earlier this month.
The popular bar will be part of celebrations and events across the neighborhood and city next month for Pride.
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