An Illegal Immigrant Poured Lighter Fluid on a Burning Police Cruiser While Officers Were Trapped Beneath It. He Just Found Out What That Costs.
On the night of June 8, 2025, a California Highway Patrol cruiser burned beneath the Main Street overpass in downtown Los Angeles while the officers who owned it sheltered under the bridge, pinned by a crowd throwing rocks, chunks of concrete and lit debris down at them.
Yachua Mauricio Flores, a 23-year-old Mexican national living in the city’s Lincoln Heights neighborhood with no legal immigration status, stood at the railing above them. Prosecutors say he poured lighter fluid from two separate bottles onto the flames, then directed another rioter to pour more onto the same vehicle and helped throw an electric scooter over the side toward the officers and cruisers below.
On August 3, 2026, more than a year later, Flores found out what that cost him.
- 37 months in federal prison, handed down by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter — U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California
- $253,415 in restitution Flores was ordered to pay — DOJ, August 3, 2026
- 7 people federally charged over the single attack on this one CHP cruiser, from misdemeanor assault to a 20-year felony — U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California
The riot didn’t start on the overpass. It started two days earlier, when ICE and other federal agents fanned out across downtown Los Angeles and the Westlake District executing worksite immigration enforcement operations. Crowds gathered to block the arrests, and by June 8 the standoff had moved to the Main Street overpass above U.S. Highway 101, with CHP officers and their patrol vehicles positioned on the freeway directly below a crowd of protesters turned rioters.
A message to the LA rioters: you will not stop us or slow us down. @ICEgov will continue to enforce the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
According to his own plea agreement, Flores knew exactly what was underneath that overpass when he started pouring lighter fluid: officers who could not get out. Court filings say the crowd had already been throwing rocks, chunks of concrete, fireworks, street signs and burning debris down at the trapped CHP personnel before Flores escalated further, dousing the already-burning cruiser and directing a second rioter to add more fuel. He and another rioter then heaved an electric scooter off the overpass toward the vehicles and officers underneath — conduct prosecutors say created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to people who had nowhere to run.
Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld took up the broader unrest days later, holding up the video of a police cruiser burning under a freeway bridge against early media framing of the demonstrations as “mostly peaceful.”
Flores pleaded guilty on April 27, 2026, to a single federal count: obstructing, impeding and interfering with law enforcement officers during a civil disorder, a charge under 18 U.S.C. § 231 carrying up to five years in prison. He was sentenced to 37 months — a little over three years — plus $253,415 in restitution, the government’s estimate of what it will cost to make the CHP whole for the vehicle and equipment his fire helped destroy.
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter handed down the sentence in Los Angeles federal court. The FBI investigated the case, with the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles Police Department assisting — the kind of multi-agency file that follows a defendant from a burning freeway overpass to a federal courtroom over fourteen months.
“Another day, another illegal immigration rioter from last summer is sent to federal prison. Actions have consequences. Those who attack law enforcement will face the full force of justice. This defendant can now reflect on his actions from a federal prison cell.”
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli (R) · Central District of California · on X, August 3, 2026
Yachua Mauricio Flores, 23, of Lincoln Heights, was sentenced today to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $253,415 in restitution for his role in the June 2025 anti-ICE riot in downtown Los Angeles.
Flores was never the whole case. Federal prosecutors ultimately charged seven people over the Main Street overpass attack on this single CHP cruiser, with penalties scaled to what each one actually did. Adam Charles Palermo, 40, of the Rampart Village neighborhood, is described by prosecutors as the attack’s lead participant; he pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting and impeding officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon and faces up to 20 years in prison at his December 14, 2026 sentencing. Ismael Vega, 42, of Westlake, held burning cardboard over the railing, lined it up with the cruiser’s hood and dropped it — he was sentenced July 28, 2026 to the same 37 months and the same $253,415 restitution as Flores.
Three more defendants — Balton Montion, 25, of Watsonville; Ronald Alexis Coreas, 23, of Westlake; and Junior Roldan, 27, of Hollywood — face lesser federal counts ranging from felony civil-disorder obstruction to misdemeanor simple assault on a federal officer. A seventh, Jesus Gonzalez Hernandez Jr., 22, of Las Vegas, was expected to enter a guilty plea as well. Essayli’s office has treated the group’s sentencings as a running scoreboard, posting each outcome to X as it lands.
Those who attack our brave officers protecting public safety will face federal prison time for their crimes. Let this be a warning to others who think they can act without consequences.
While CHP officers were pinned beneath a burning cruiser on a city freeway, Los Angeles’s own elected leadership was objecting to the federal response, not the riot. President Trump ordered roughly 2,000 California National Guard members deployed on June 7 and 8, 2025, over the objections of both the mayor and the governor.
Mayor Karen Bass (D) called the deployment “completely unnecessary” and said of the administration’s response, “to me, this is just political.” She said Los Angeles was not “out of control” in the days the CHP cruiser was set on fire beneath her city’s own freeway.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D) formally demanded the Trump administration rescind the deployment, writing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that “California didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty.”
We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California. If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.
Posted as the Main Street overpass riot was unfolding — defending the deployment Bass and Newsom opposed
Fourteen months later, the political argument over troop deployments is a memory. The federal prosecutions are not. Seven people were charged over one burning cruiser and one group of officers who could not walk away from an overpass; two are sentenced, one faces sentencing in December, and the rest are working through a federal docket that does not care which mayor or governor objected to the National Guard order that followed the riot they started.
An illegal immigrant poured lighter fluid on a burning police cruiser while officers were trapped beneath it, then helped throw a scooter at them. Fourteen months later, a federal judge gave him 37 months and a six-figure restitution bill. Six more defendants from the same attack are moving through the same docket — while the mayor and governor whose city hosted the riot spent that week objecting to the troops sent to help contain it, not to the rioters who set a police car on fire.
