A now-disbarred New York City attorney was sentenced Friday to 15 months for firebombing an empty police vehicle along with another lawyer using a Molotov cocktail in the midst of violent clashes with authorities following the murder of George Floyd.
Urooj Rahman asked a judge to spare her from serving prison time and give her a "second chance," in what she described as a lapse of judgment.
"I’m so incredibly sorry for my reckless and wrong actions," Rahman said in a Brooklyn federal court, Fox New York reported. "I don’t think there’s enough words to express my sorrow and regret. ... I completely lost my way in the emotion of the night."
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan praised the Ivy League-trained attorney for choosing a career in public interest law to fight against social injustices.
"You’re a remarkable person who did a terrible thing on one night," Cogan said before admonishing her behavior, the news outlet reported. "It displays an amazing amount of arrogance. … It’s just a very arrogant way to think."
Rahman and Colinford Mattis, a corporate lawyer and Brooklyn community board member, were arrested after allegedly passing out incendiary devices to demonstrators in a crowd in Brooklyn during clashes with the NYPD, days after Floyd died in Minneapolis during an arrest.
Floyd's death set off a nationwide wave of protests and clashes between demonstrators and police.
Both attorneys were arrested after Mattis, who was in the driver’s seat of a van, pulled over near the 88th police precinct, and Rahman got out and tossed a lit Molotov cocktail into a police cruiser.
Nobody was injured in the attack but security cameras recorded Rahman hurling the cocktail into the police vehicle, which was severely damaged.
Officers said they found a lighter, a Bud Light beer bottle filled with toilet paper, and a gasoline tank in the back of the minivan driven by Mattis.
Rahman and Mattis have both been disbarred. Mattis is expected to be sentenced in December.
