New Jersey man pleads guilty to throwing firecracker at Pittsburgh police during protest
A New Jersey man pleaded guilty Tuesday to throwing a firecracker at police officers during last year’s protests in Downtown Pittsburgh over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Nicholas Frank Lucia, 26, of Long Beach Township, pleaded guilty in federal court in Pittsburgh via video conference to a single count of obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder.
In exchange for his plea before U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab, Lucia will serve two years in federal prison.
The sentence is to run at the same time as an expected sentence of 10 to 20 months in state court stemming from the same conduct, said defense attorney Patrick Livingston.
In Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, Lucia is charged with dozens of counts, including aggravated assault, riot, reckless endangerment and possessing a weapon of mass destruction.
He is scheduled for a hearing before Common Pleas Judge Susan Evashavik DiLucente on Jan. 11.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Lusty said that during Downtown protests on May 30, 2020, Lucia lit an explosive device — which the defense characterized as a firecracker — and threw it at a group of about a dozen police officers. It landed on the vest of one of those officers, and another grabbed it and threw it about 15 feet away, where it exploded.
Lusty said an officer sustained a concussion from the blast.
Using surveillance video from the area, the government said, investigators tracked Lucia to a Lyft vehicle that then dropped him off a block away from his home at the time. Lucia used the same cellphone number to order the Lyft as he had previously used to contact police twice before, Lusty said.
After the government summarized the evidence against Lucia, Livingston said that his client did not participate in any of the vandalism Downtown that day.
“He is here today to admit he threw the device, a firecracker, and hit an officer,” the defense attorney said.
Livingston also said that medical records were not clear that the officer sustained a concussion.
Sentencing in federal court is scheduled for June 7.
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of "Death by Cyanide." She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.
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