A woman is arrested after burning a flag, claims to be with ISIS, charged with desecration of the flag

Evansville Police say a woman trespassed onto a business’s property, set the American flag on fire, and replaced it with a flag for ISIS.

Evansville police say they got a call Sunday morning about an arson in progress at the Spectrum building on Old Business 41 in Evansville. There they found 43-year-old Sierra Malloy, who they say had taken the American flag off the flag pole, burned it, and replaced it with an ISIS flag. EPD shared their body cam footage from the arrest.

Evansville police responded to a unique situation Sunday morning.

“We come across situations' day to day that are, well it just never ceases to amaze us what we find,” said EPD Sergeant Anna Gray.

They say they found a Sierra Malloy burning the American flag. Body camera video from the arrest shows Malloy threatening, cursing, and using homophobic slurs towards police officers as they arrested her and removed the ISIS flag from the pole.

“If y'all don’t get fired, (beep) toast, ISIS will cut your (beep) heads off,” said Malloy on the body cam video.

“My head?” said an EPD officer.

“Yeah, he’s going to cut your heads off,” said Malloy. “You don’t even know who I am, do you? Yeah, you’re going to find out who I am.”

EPD says Malloy claimed to be a member of ISIS, and they say she was videotaping the American flag burning before law enforcement arrived.

Malloy is facing several charges including intimidation, criminal trespass, criminal mischief, and desecration of the flag.

Evansville police say despite how unique the situation was, officers do regularly deal with belligerent people, so this allowed them to keep their cool with Malloy.

“I think they were initially surprised, but I don’t think it was anything overly unusual, just the disorderly part of it,” said Gray. “I mean, if you take away the fact that she was burning a flag, just the way she was talking to officers, and just kind of the bizarre behavior, we do deal with that quite a bit.”

Evansville police say mental illness as well as narcotics may have played a role in what happened. Malloy was in court Monday and the court found probable cause to believe she committed a felony.