Charles Anthony Pittman, one of the two men who pleaded guilty to setting fire to Fayetteville’s Market House during a protest in May 2020, lost his appeal of his conviction.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on Monday that the case against him stands.
Pittman, 37, was released from federal prison in March of last year, the Bureau of Prisons website says. Co-defendant Andrew Salvarani Garcia-Smith, 36, was released in November 2022.
Protest turned into looting
Pittman and Garcia-Smith set fire to the Market House on May 30, 2020, a Saturday, amid a George Floyd protest against police violence that escalated into instances of vandalism downtown, then widespread looting across the city.
Floyd, originally from Fayetteville, had been killed five days prior in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by a police officer who kneeled on Floyd’s neck while pinning him to the ground and kept kneeling on Floyd’s neck after Floyd fell unconscious. The officer was later convicted of murder.
The Market House, which is city property, has been a center of controversy for decades. According to historians, it was built in the 1830s as a place for the general sales of goods. It was also a site where enslaved people were sold before the Civil War, an aspect of its past that has led some people to call for its demolition.
“As recorded by several media outlets, Pittman carried a gasoline container to the second story of the Market House and waived [SIC] it to the crowd before pouring gasoline onto the floor inside. As the gasoline-soaked area caught ablaze, a City of Fayetteville employee saw Pittman run out of the building,” says a news release published in November 2020 by the United States Attorney Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“Investigators discovered the identity of Garcia-Smith after a social media post went viral,” the news release says. “As reported by local and national media outlets, the video showed Garcia-Smith picking up a bottle filled with flammable liquids and throwing it into the Market House. The liquid spilled back onto Garcia-Smith, setting his clothes and hair on fire. Investigators found Garcia-Smith in a local burn center, where Garcia-Smith admitted to being the individual in the video.”
The fire produced smoke and flames, but the sprinkler system activated and put it out. Water poured from the building through the evening.
Later that night, people spread across Fayetteville and began looting. They broke into the J.C. Penney at Cross Creek Mall, a Walmart and other stores.
The Fayetteville Police Department had officers surrounding the downtown area and near the stores that were being looted. But the department initially held back on clearing the downtown streets or stopping the looters. Officers had seen firearms among people in the crowds, and the police chief was trying to prevent conflicts that could result in deaths, according to a report issued in February 2022 by the Police Executive Resource Forum.
In the end, no one was killed. Only two were hurt, and one of the two was Garcia-Smith with his self-inflicted injuries.
Guilty pleas, and appeal
Court records say Pittman pleaded guilty in 2020 to maliciously damaging by fire a building that is receiving federal financial assistance, aiding and abetting a federal crime, and inciting a riot. He was sentenced in July 2022 to five years in prison, three years of parole, and ordered to pay $55,524.84 in restitution.
Garcia-Smith pleaded guilty in 2020 to maliciously damaging by fire a building that is receiving federal financial assistance, aiding and abetting a federal crime. He was sentenced in June 2021 to 27 months in prison followed by three years of probation.
Pittman appealed his case, but only on the charges related to setting the fire, not the charge of inciting a riot.

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