SPOKANE, Wash. — A Wapato man was sentenced to 600 months in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder earlier in 2022.
According to a press release from the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Washington, Clifton Frank Peter, 37, pleaded guilty to the three counts of murder earlier this year, which Judge Stanley Bastian described as "horrible, if not monstrous."
“This case was senseless, pointless, [and] a horrible act, leaving three people dead and their families traumatized for life," Bastian said.
Information disclosed during court proceedings revealed Peter to be an enrolled member of the Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakima Nation. It also revealed his violent criminal history.
According to the release, Peter was convicted in Yakima County Superior Court for first-degree robbery with a weapon and vehicle theft in 2011, spending 36 months in prison. He was convicted again for second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and sentenced to nine months in prison in 2013.
The district attorney's office went on to report that the murders took place on June 1, 2019, within the external boundaries of the Yakima Nation. The incident reportedly started after Peter grew angry while playing a video game. Peter had spent the day drinking, according to the district attorney's office.
After Peter began yelling, his family members decided to leave him alone. Soon after, Peter attacked his mother as she attempted to leave and took her car. Court proceedings said that as Peter backed out of the driveway, he almost collided with another car being driven by the first victim in the murders.
Peter then exited his mother's car and shot the victim with a shotgun. The first victim died from the blast. After the first murder, Peter got back in the car and traveled northbound before slamming into another vehicle occupied by the next two victims. Peter exited the vehicle and murdered the two victims by a shotgun blast.
According to the press release, after committing the murders, Peter attempted to hide the weapon before walking into the residence of a family member, saying he had "done something bad."
The family member refused to let Peter in. Soon after, deputies with the Yakima County Sheriff's Office and officers from the Yakima Nation Police Department arrived and apprehended Peter.
“Three people are dead. Two children have been orphaned without any immediate family in the United States. A family patriarch will never see his grandchildren graduate from high school or walk his daughter down the aisle,” said U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref. “Violence like this is not normal, and it cannot be normalized. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to prosecute violence throughout Eastern Washington, in the big cities and small towns, on the farms and on the Palouse, and on every Indian Nation. I commend the collaborative efforts of the Yakama Nation Police Department, the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office, the Washington State Patrol, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their seamless partnership in this case, which resulted in a significant sentence. But for the families of Mr. Peter’s victims, nothing will ever be the same again. No sentence could ever bring back their beloved family members, but I hope there is some comfort in knowing that today, the Court removed from the Yakama Nation a dangerous offender whose hair-trigger response to being angry at a video game was to murder three people in cold blood.”
“The FBI, along with our partners, have made combating violent crime in Washington a priority,” said Richard A. Collodi, Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle Field Office of the FBI. “Three innocent people were murdered in what can only be described as utterly senseless acts. Today’s sentence is particularly resonant, given the nature and violence of Mr. Peter’s crimes.”
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