A 28-year-old St. Paul woman who admitted in federal court to assaulting law enforcement officers during a protest last year in South Minneapolis has been ordered to pay a $25 fine.

Isabel Lopez was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis after accepting a plea agreement to a lesser misdemeanor charge of assaulting, resisting and impeding a U.S. officer in connection with a protest that broke out while authorities were executing a search warrant that a crowd mistook for an immigration raid in June  2025.

Lopez was originally charged by indictment with three felony counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding officers and one felony count of obstruction of law enforcement.

Lopez faced up to one year in prison on the misdemeanor conviction, however, the defense and prosecution both asked Tunheim for no prison time. The prosecution requested one year of probation, which Tunheim turned down.

According to court documents, law enforcement officers from multiple federal agencies were executing eight search warrants in the Twin Cities on June 3, 2025, related to an investigation into narcotics trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking and related offenses.

The investigation began with the discovery of 900 pounds of methamphetamine in a Burnsville storage unit, with a street value of between $22 million and $25 million.

Shortly after a search warrant execution began at Cuatro Milpas restaurant on Lake Street, a crowd began to gather.

“The crowd appeared to be under the mistaken belief that law enforcement was present to arrest individuals illegally present in the country for immigration offenses,” the criminal complaint said. “This was incorrect.”

After recognizing the apparent misunderstanding, law enforcement explained the nature of the search warrant to the crowd, according to prosecutors.

As part of her plea agreement, Lopez admitted to hitting an FBI SWAT agent with her arms and closed fist, and kicking another agent. The officers were not injured. As law enforcement attempted to leave the scene, Lopez threw a softball at the back of a Hennepin County sheriff’s deputy.

Karen Rutledge was walking her dogs along the shore of the White River just before 3 p.m. on June 24 when she saw a man standing in the bed of a pickup stranded in the middle of the river.

She had received word of a potential drowning on the river from a public safety app and went to check it out, she said.

“I saw a guy standing on the truck, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’” she said. “And then I saw all the fire engines and everything.”

The Indianapolis Fire Department was called to the river when a man swam out to the pickup, prompting an emergency water rescue. Divers went out to the vehicle in a rescue boat, IFD Battalion Chief Candace Ashby said, and brought the man back to shore.

IFD Special Operations Command Capt. Chris Van Roo said the man told Department of Natural Resources officers he swam out to check whether anyone was in the vehicle. He is not believed to be the pickup’s owner and left the scene shortly after being brought safely to shore, both IFD and Rutledge said.

The pickup, a dark-colored Chevrolet, has been sitting in the river near West 16th Street and Waterway Boulevard — just off the bank of Belmont Beach — since Monday evening or Tuesday morning, first responders told IndyStar.

With potential incoming rain sweeping through Indianapolis this week, Ashby said, the DNR may not be able to remove the pickup from the river for several days.

“We just hope that no other [people go] to that truck,” she said.

Low-head dams along river pose dangers to those in the water

The pickup is stuck near the Emrichsville Dam on the White River at Belmont Beach. More than two years ago, the city received a $750,000 federal grant to remove the low-head dam as part of a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service effort to improve fish passage and safe recreational use of the river.

The Department of Public Works did not immediately respond to IndyStar’s inquiry about the status of the project.

Low-head dams can be extremely unsafe to those out on the water. In April 2024, two kayakers – Marcus Robinson, 30, and Solomon Shirley, 22 – drowned after their boats went over the Emrichsville Dam and were found capsized. In 2021, 17-year-old Kevin Rodriguez drowned near the same dam.

“Any low-head dam is dangerous,” Van Roo said, encouraging those on the river to be aware of their surroundings.

Mia Thurow is the breaking news and criminal justice reporting intern for the Indianapolis Star. She can be reached at mthurow@gannett.com. Reporter Ryan Murphy contributed to this article.