The youngest brother of Pat Tillman, the N.F.L. star turned U.S. Army Ranger who died in friendly fire in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty last week in federal court to setting fire to a Northern California post office last summer.
Richard Tillman, 44, of San Jose, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of malicious destruction of government property, for setting fire to the Almaden Valley U.S. Post Office in San Jose in the early hours of July 20, 2025. No one was injured.
Mr. Tillman backed his vehicle through the front door of the post office, got out of the vehicle and then set it ablaze, federal prosecutors said. He had loaded the vehicle with fire logs, which he doused with lighter fluid, prosecutors said.
The fire quickly spread, destroying the lobby, which housed post office boxes. The entire post office building has been unavailable to the public since the fire.
Mr. Tillman remains in federal custody. He faces a minimum sentence of five years, and up to 20 years in prison, as well as a $250,000 fine, at his sentencing on April 27.
In pleading guilty, Mr. Tillman admitted that he intentionally set the fire to “make a point to the United States government.”
It’s unclear precisely what point Mr. Tillman was trying to make, but his relatives said after his arrest that they believed the crash reflected longtime emotional suffering that Mr. Tillman had endured.
Pat Tillman joined the Army in June 2002 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He spurned a three-year, $3.6 million contract extension from the Arizona Cardinals, to instead earn about $1,000 a month as a soldier.
He was believed to be the first N.F.L. player since World War II to leave the game voluntarily for military service. Mr. Tillman, one of the team’s most popular players, enlisted with his younger brother Kevin.
After Corporal Tillman’s death on April 22, 2004, at the age of 27, in a remote canyon near the village of Magar near the border with Pakistan, the Army announced that he was killed by militants.
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Kevin Tillman was in a convoy behind his brother when his brother was killed, but he did not see it.
Another Army Ranger said on Capitol Hill in 2007 that he had been told to lie to Kevin Tillman about his brother’s death, so that he would not learn that Corporal Tillman had died in a case of friendly fire.
Many officers, however, knew that he had been a casualty of American fire. The military waited nearly five weeks before telling Corporal Tillman’s family that enemy fire did not kill him.
They also waited until after President George W. Bush eulogized him as an American war hero killed by enemy combatants.
Richard Tillman spoke at a memorial service for his brother about two weeks after his death. He, along with his other relatives, publicly challenged the official account of his brother’s death.
After multiple Pentagon investigations, the Army eventually censured a retired three-star general for errors and deceptions and apologized to the Tillman family and the public for “mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership.”
Richard Tillman appeared in “The Tillman Story,” a documentary about the family’s efforts to reveal a more complicated story of Corporal Tillman’s life and death, as well as their anger with military officials.
Richard Tillman worked as an actor, with a series of small roles in movies and on television, as a stand-up comedian and as the author of children’s books.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
The post Pat Tillman’s Brother Pleads Guilty to Setting Post Office Fire appeared first on New York Times.
