E. Washington father sentenced for the stolen gun that killed his 4-year-old son

An Eastern Washington man who shot and killed his young son with a stolen gun has been sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.

Felipe Tapia-Perez, 29, of Othello, pleaded guilty Oct. 27 to being an unlawful alien in possession of a firearm and and possession of a stolen gun.

U.S. Judge William Fremming Nielsen ordered the sentence to be served at the same time as a first-degree manslaughter sentence of seven years and two months imposed in Adams County Superior Court.

Tapia-Perez also was sentenced to three years of federal probation.

“You should not have had a firearm,” the judge said during the sentencing, according to the Eastern Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office. “The firearm was loaded. You were in an argument with a woman you are prohibited by a no-contact order from being with, but you were with her anyway. You were waving a firearm around, and it resulted in tragedy.”

Tapia-Perez was barred from contacting the mother of his children by a domestic violence protection order.

But in February 2021, he drove to her home in Othello, 50 miles north of the Tri-Cities, and parked outside, according to court documents.

He was holding a stolen pistol and waving it in the air as he and the mother of his children argued in his car and his 4-year-old son, Jeremiah, waited outside the front passenger window.

The pistol discharged, and the bullet went past the woman and struck the boy in the head.

The child was driven to Othello Community Hospital and preparations were being made to fly him by air ambulance to a Spokane hospital when he died.

Tapia-Perez said the shooting was an accident, according to initial police reports.

According to court documents, he told the child’s mother to lie about the incident, which she did in two interviews before telling the truth.

“(Tapia-Perez) will never forget what happened on this day whether he is in custody or out,” his attorney Amy Rubin of Spokane said in a court document. “It is a moment that he would give anything, including his own life, to change.”

She said he will be deported to Mexico after serving his prison time.

Stolen gun used

In March 2023, Alondra Yanez, 25, was sentenced to three years and 10 months in federal prison after selling stolen guns, including to Tapia-Perez.

In February 2021, Guillermo Valdez stole 11 guns in the burglary of a house in Newman Lake, Wash., according to federal court documents. Yanez was helping him sell them.

Valdez was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in October 2022.

Both Valdez and Tapia-Perez were not allowed to have guns — Valdez because he was a felon and Tapia-Perez because he was not in the United States legally and had a domestic violence no-contact order.

Jonathan McPherson of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called Tapia-Perez’s sentence “significant” and “well-deserved.”

“He knew he shouldn’t have had firearms to begin with, let alone a stolen firearm, but the resulting horrific loss of his child for something so senseless makes this even more than tragic,” McPherson said.

The case was investigated by the ATF, the Othello Police Department, the Moses Lake Police Department, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Ellis.

This story was originally published June 15, 2023 at 5:00 AM.