Gang Member Sentenced to 12.5 Years in Federal Court for Shooting at Warm Springs Police Officers
Defendant is a Member of the Native Gangsta Tribe Street Gang

PORTLAND, OR—Today, Waylon McKie Weaselhead, 23, of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, was sentenced to 150 months’ imprisonment by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones for shooting at three Warm Springs Police Officers. On November 1, 2011, the defendant pled guilty to three counts of assault with intent to commit murder. The federal sentence will run consecutively to a 15-year state sentence the defendant is serving for his involvement in attempting to kill Madras Police Officers. Judge Jones ordered the defendant to spend three years on supervised release after he leaves the Bureau of Prisons.

On May 20, 2010, during a high speed car chase on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, the defendant leaned out the passenger window of a vehicle with a rifle and repeatedly shot at and tried to kill three pursuing Warm Springs Officers—Officers Zachary Dowty, Aaron Gilbert, and Andrew Elliot. Although the defendant hit both of the pursuing police vehicles with bullets, including blowing a hole through the front windshield of one car, the officers were not harmed and the defendant escaped. Over a month later when the defendant was eventually arrested he saw Officer Dowty in the jail and said: “I almost got you.” At the time of the crime, the defendant was a designated member of the Native Gangsta Tribe (NGT) street gang. The driver of the vehicle the defendant was in at the time of the crime was Aldo Antunez, a senior NGT member who was later sentenced to 188 months in federal prison for shooting at a U.S. Marshal who was trying to arrest him.

“This defendant is a violent gang member whose actions amply demonstrate that he has no respect for the sanctity of human life,” stated U.S. Attorney S. Amanda Marshall. “We greatly appreciate the massive multi-agency response to the events of May 20, 2010, which included personnel from federal, tribal, county, local and state law enforcement agencies who worked tirelessly to locate and apprehend the suspects involved.”

The federal case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Warm Springs Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Kerin and Craig Gabriel prosecuted the case.