SEATTLE — The Tulalip man whose teenage son killed four students and himself at Marysville Pilchuck High School in 2014 was scheduled to be sentenced Monday after being convicted of illegally possessing firearms, including the handgun used in the shootings.
Assistant U.S. attorneys are seeking roughly three years in prison for Raymond Fryberg, 42, the stiffest punishment under federal sentencing guidelines.
Fryberg’s defense attorneys, however, say the man and his family have suffered enough and two years of probation, with no time behind bars, is more appropriate.
A U.S. District Court jury in September convicted Fryberg of six counts of illegal firearm possession. He was the subject of a 2002 domestic-violence protection order in Tulalip Tribal Court that forbade him from owning guns.
An investigation after the Oct. 24, 2014 shootings found the elder Fryberg repeatedly filled out federal forms while buying 10 different guns and never once answered truthfully that he was disqualified from making such purchases. The defendant’s son used his dad’s illegally acquired .40-caliber handgun to open fire in a high school cafeteria. Before taking his own life, the teen shot five of his friends and relatives. Only one boy, shot in the jaw, survived.
Lying to skirt federal firearms laws is a serious offense and the consequence in this case contributed to the tragedy at Marysville Pilchuck, assistant U.S. attorneys Ye-Ting Woo and Bruce Miyake said in court papers.
“The government recognizes that this court must impose a sentence commensurate with Fryberg’s unlawful possession of firearms, not for any other crimes,” they prosecutors wrote. However, they asked Judge James L. Robart to take notice that Fryberg kept weapons where his son could gain access, and that guns still were unsecured inside the home months later when federal agents showed up with search warrants.
Fryberg’s lawyers claimed that he never was served with the protection order. In addition, he was issued a concealed pistol license and was never questioned when game wardens checked his name during tribal hunting trips.
The tribal protection order was not entered into a database that can be checked when screening firearm purchases or during contacts with police. Prosecutors demonstrated Fryberg had long been served with the order and understood its meaning.
Seattle defense attorneys John Henry Browne and Michael Lee urged the judge to extend their client some mercy.
After the high school shooting, “For a brief, stoic moment in life, Mr. Fryberg truly believed his circumstances could get no worse,” they wrote. “His son was gone, his family forever broken. He had lost everything but his sobriety and a single droplet of faith that somehow remained deep in his soul.”
Then the federal government came to arrest Fryberg, the attorneys wrote.
Their client has since lost his job with the Tulalip Tribes, has been alienated from his community and “been painted by the media as a monster” as his case became fodder for the national debate over the adequacy of firearm background checks.
They urged Robart to depart from federal sentencing guidelines that would see Fryberg locked up between 27 and 33 months. They urged a probation-only sentence, and no more than three months behind bars if some detention is deemed necessary.
In support of leniency, the lawyers filed multiple letters from people supporting Ray Fryberg, including people who know him from coaching sports, from the Tulalip Indian Reservation and his large family. One letter was written by his dead’s son’s former girlfriend. Another was from his wife, Wendy Fryberg, a former member of the Marysville School Board.
“My husband is the rock of my family, he has been the one constant to hold us together after the loss of our son in October 2014,” she wrote.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
