Police found the burned body of a man that was set ablaze on May 28, at the height of the protests for the death of African-American George Floyd in the hands of law enforcement officers. A Rochester man, Montez Terriel Lee has been charged with arson.
Burned man during protests
According to KTTC, an official news release from the Minneapolis Police Department states that the Medical Examiner's Office was looking to identify the dead man and to determine the cause and nature of death.
The body was discovered on Monday as local authorities were sifting through debris at the location of a pawnshop which was approximately three miles away from where Floyd, unfortunately, lost his life.
The US Attorney's Office in Minnesota said that video footage found in June showed Lee pouring some sort of liquid from the metal container he was carrying around the pawnshop.
The case is being treated as a homicide as the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office announced that it did not have information to release the cause of death at the time.
A police spokesman, John Elder, noted that the man's injuries gave officers the reason to believe that it was connected to the case of Lee's arson, as reported by The New York Times.
A lawyer for 25-year-old Lee did not immediately answer a phone message that was left on Tuesday.
Several departments assisted the Minneapolis Police Department in searching inside the building where the dead man was found including the Minneapolis Fire Department, the Minnesota State Fire Marshal Division, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
A spokeswoman said the ATF has been coordinating and assisting local and state authorities since June to examine more than 150 fires that have occurred across the Twin Cities. She also noted the agency and several others have returned to the scenes of the fires based on new evidence and information.
George Floyd's death
In May several protests calling out racial injustice and police brutality have broken out after a police officer knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly ten minutes during which the black man kept screaming out that he could not breathe, as reported by CNN.
The massive surge of demonstrations, some of which have escalated to be violent, overwhelmed local officials, police officers, and emergency response teams.
Multiple fires raged across the United States amid the chaos, notably focused around East Lake Street, with several violent movements occurring beside the peaceful demonstrations.
During the protests, the Third Precinct police station of Minneapolis was barricaded with fences to protect from demonstrators. The construction, however, proved to be moot as thousands of protesters dismantled it and stormed the area of the precinct while lighting it on fire.
Sara Sidner, a CNN National Correspondent who was at the area at the time noted the precinct was ablaze and did not know where the police officers were stationed. Sidner also noted that the fire alarm inside the building was going off and protesters were cheering and setting off fireworks as the precinct burned down.
