Rioter who injured police officer at Columbia’s 2020 Black Lives Matter riot pleads guilty

A rioter at Columbia’s 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration who injured a police officer with a rock pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges of interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder.

Brandon Jemar Pickett, 37, pleaded before U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis. He will be sentenced at a later date.

He could receive up to five years in prison.

Pickett, who worked at a Columbia area chicken processing plant, was in the thick of the riot on the afternoon of Saturday, May 30, 2020, in front of Columbia police headquarters near where rioters were burning police cars and looting stores, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Lamar Fyall during Tuesday’s hearing.

During the riot, Pickett grabbed a rock and hurled it at a Columbia police officer, striking his lower leg and chipping a tibia bone, causing the officer to be hospitalized, Fyall said.

The attack was captured on police video, Fyall said.

Pickett’s attorney, federal public defender Michael Meetz, told the judge that his client admits to throwing the rock but stressed that whether the rock actually hit a police officer is a matter to be discussed during the sentencing hearing.

Pickett, who has been incarcerated since last August when a federal magistrate judge ruled he was a flight risk, appeared in court in a red jail jump suit, wearing belly and ankle chains.

According to evidence in the case, Pickett is a Bloods gang member who was denied bond because in addition to being a flight risk, he poses a danger to the community. His history of violence includes two charges of assault and battery with intent to kill, according to evidence in his case.

Pickett’s Bloods gang membership is reflected by a “B” tattoo on his neck and a five-point star,” according to evidence in his case.

Following the riot in downtown Columbia — the worst public civil disturbance in memory — police arrested some 90 individuals including Pickett. Many of them were tried in state court.

In May 2020, following the unprovoked chokehold murder of George Floyd, an unarmed African-American man, at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, riots and protests broke out across South Carolina and the nation.

“Floyd’s death was the catalyst for protests and rioting across the nation, including the civil unrest of May 30-31, in Columbia,” said an after-action Columbia Police Department report on the riots.

Up to the point on May 30 when the riots broke out, the protests in Columbia had been peaceful, the report said, but “the CPD underestimated the level of feeling within the community. Therefore, the CPD did not anticipate violence and was not prepared for the degree or speed at which the violence escalated,” the report said. The department has since undertaken corrective measures, the report said.

No one was killed in Columbia’s disturbances, but rioters damaged or destroyed 24 city of Columbia vehicles including 13 police cars and two fire trucks. Ten officers and two firefighters were injured by rioters throwing objects. Two other officers were assaulted by wasp spray, the report said.

Columbia police Chief Skip Holbrook said after Tuesday’s hearing, “It was two dark days for our city. What a lot of people don’t realize is that it was followed by 60 straight days of protests that we had to staff with our partnering agencies to make sure they were all peaceful — and they were.”