Individual Pleads Guilty To Murder In Indian Country

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Neil Shai-Cameron Lewis, age 26, entered a guilty plea to one count of Murder (Second Degree) in Indian Country.

The Indictment alleged that the crime occurred on or about March 21, 2020, at a Muscogee (Creek) Nation Low Rent Housing Edition located in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma.  The defendant was homeless and staying with someone in the complex, and during the course of hours, a group of men drank and socialized in an apartment in the complex.  They drank to excess and became intoxicated, and the defendant started to become argumentative and aggressive toward the other drinkers.  The defendant then struck one of the men outside of the apartment, and the man was injured enough that EMS and the police were summoned.  After attending to the injured man, the police knocked on the door to the apartment where the defendant and the other men had been drinking.  Eventually, the defendant answered the door with blood all over his person, and the police discovered the victim, Deslin Gouge, who had been beaten severely and was lying on the floor.  It appeared that the television set and a coat rack were used as weapons to inflict blunt force trauma on the victim.  The victim subsequently died, and while in the county jail the defendant admitted to another inmate that he was a killer.

The charges arose from an investigation by the Muscogee Creek Nation Lighthorse Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Honorable Kimberley West, U.S. Magistrate Judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, in Muskogee, accepted the plea and ordered the completion of a presentence investigation report.

Assistant U.S. Attorney George Gialketsis represented the United States.