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DENVER—A Salt Lake City animal rights activist who set fire to a Denver-area store that sells products made from sheepskin was sentenced Friday to five years in prison and ordered to pay $1.2 million in a case animal rights activists say has united many in their community.

Walter Edmund Bond, who goes by “Lone Wolf” and has “VEGAN” tattooed across his throat, was defiant in U.S. District Court in Denver, telling Judge Christine Arguello that he burned down the Sheepskin Factory in April as a way to stop the enslavement, abuse and murder of animals.

“I’m not sorry for anything,” Bond told Arguello. “As for restitution, I will not willingly pay you one dollar. I hope you choke on it and burn in hell.”

Prosecutor Greg Holloway disagreed with Bond’s stated motives, telling Arguello that a 1997 arson conviction in Iowa unrelated to animal activism indicated that Bond “likes to light stuff on fire.”

Animal rights activists and Bond supporters came from California, New York and Nevada to attend the hearing.

The U.S. Marshals Service escorted one of the supporters out of the courtroom following the hearing after she exchanged words with a person standing next to Louis Livaditis, the owner of the destroyed factory. She was not arrested.

“It’s very easy to become complacent,” said Elizabeth Tobier of Brooklyn, N.Y., who said she learned of Bond’s July arrest while she was demonstrating against a circus in Coney Island “I’ve been very inspired by him.”

Despite Bond’s tone at the hearing, Arguello noted that sentencing guidelines called for the minimum five year sentence.

She said the sentence was appropriate partly because the 34-year-old Bond told his family and a probation officer that he would no longer use arson in animal rights activism, and instead would focus on speaking and writing to raise awareness for his cause.

Arguello also sentenced Bond to three years of supervised release, with one of the conditions that he pay at least 10 percent of his gross income toward restitution under threat of being incarcerated.

Livaditis, who was in court with his family, said after the hearing that the five year sentence wasn’t enough. But he said he held out hope that Bond would get more prison time for fires he’s accused of setting in Utah.

Federal charges are pending in U.S. District Court in Utah in a June 5 fire at the Tandy Leather Factory Store in Salt Lake City, as well as from a July 2 fire in Sandy at Tiburon Fine Dining, which serves foie gras.

In a letter to Arguello, Livaditis said the fire at his factory destroyed specialty machinery and proprietary patterns developed over 30 years of business, and also derailed his plans to retire, forcing Livaditis and his wife to dip into savings to rebuild the business for their five children.

“We reopened about a month after the fire,” Livaditis said after the hearing. “Little by little, it’s getting better, but not like it was before.”

In letters posted on the website of the Animal Liberation Front, Bond said he had built slaughterhouses and had become convinced that everybody would become vegan if they knew what he knew.

He also wrote that he passed out flyers and pamphlets, tried starting his own animal rights group and recruited at concerts before he became “burnt out” and decided to quit his job at a health store to take more drastic measures.

In court, Holloway said one of the fires set by Bond killed an animal and another involved setting a pentagram ablaze inside a church.

“Animal rights seems to be another justification for his actions,” Holloway said.

At least one supporter, Ginger Peterson of Las Vegas, disagreed with Bond’s actions.

“I don’t know what the benefit is in burning down a building,” Peterson said. “I think the public might be more sympathetic if they just release the animals.”