Warm Springs Man Enters Guilty Plea in Shooting Death

PORTLAND, OR—U.S. District Judge Ancer L. Haggerty accepted a guilty plea on October 3, 2011, from a 23-year-old Warm Springs man, Ted L. Barney, Jr. In pleading guilty to murder in the second degree, defendant, Barney, admitted that he fired a 9mm handgun on July 26, 2011 in Warm Springs that killed 24-year-old Delmer Davis.

According to the government, on July 26, 2011 on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, the defendant was a passenger in a car driving in a residential neighborhood. A man standing in the driveway of a home in the neighborhood threw a rock at defendant’s car as it drove by. The rock missed the car, but defendant told the driver to turn around and then stop the car. The defendant got out of the car and approached the man in the driveway, who was about 75 feet away (the driveway was long). The defendant then began shooting with a 9mm handgun. The man hid behind a vehicle in the driveway.

Defendant fired approximately five shots, gunfire did not hit Barney’s intended target, the man who threw a rock at defendant’s car. However, one of the bullets from defendant’s gun went through the window of the vehicle the man was hiding behind, hitting a man sitting in the car.

Delmer Davis, a 24-year-old Indian male, was sitting in the vehicle holding his infant son. Mr. Davis was hit in the head with the bullet that went through that vehicle’s window from defendant’s gun. Mr. Davis died en route to the hospital as a result of that wound.

The defendant, who initially may not have realized he hit anybody (the windows of the vehicle were tinted), turned himself in to the Warm Springs Police Department later that day when he learned the police were looking for him. Defendant provided the handgun to the Warm Springs Police, and after Miranda, he confessed that he was the shooter and that he was aiming to hit another man in the driveway.

Sentencing is scheduled for December 12, 2011, before Judge Haggerty. Under the terms of a plea agreement, the parties have agreed to recommend a prison sentence of 18 years.

The Warm Springs Police Department and FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel is handling the criminal prosecution.