Pregnant mom calls for help, ends up killed by police. Her tribe wants answers

The young mom texted her boyfriend: “Come and get the girls or call 911. I’m about to shoot myself.” Renee Davis was five months pregnant. She lay in bed, a gun within reach. Two of her daughters, ages 2 and 3, played in another room of their modest beige house on the Muckleshoot reservation south of Seattle. It wasn’t the first time Renee had reached out to friends and family for emotional support. And on that day, Oct. 21, her texts grew more desperate as night fell. Renee’s boyfriend found King County Deputy Nicholas Pritchett, who was assigned to the Muckleshoot Reservation, and asked him to check on Renee. He told the deputy that Renee had access to guns. Pritchett had worked on the reservation for seven years, according to police records, and he knew Renee. He had responded to about a half dozen incidents involving her as a victim of domestic violence.

A second deputy, Tim Lewis, arrived as backup. The two men walked up to Renee’s house and knocked, but no one answered right away. According to a statement from the King County Sheriff’s Office, one of Renee’s toddler daughters eventually let them into the house. They found Renee in bed with a handgun in one hand and ammunition in the other. They ordered Renee to put the gun down and, according to the police statement, tried to back out of the room. That’s when Renee lifted the handgun and pointed it at the deputies. Both deputies pulled their weapons and fired at Renee. It was 6:57 p.m., one minute after they had entered the house. That one minute would become a focal point during the investigation into Renee’s death.

Bree Black Horse, an attorney for Renee’s family, described what happened next: “A third responding officer had pulled up to the house and saw the children leaving the house screaming and crying amidst a hail of gunfire,” Black Horse said. “He ran up, thankfully grabbed the children, and sought cover behind his patrol car.” When the dust settled, Black Horse said, bullets were pulled from walls, Renee’s mattress and neighboring vehicles. /// It has been five months since Renee was killed, and the Muckleshoot tribe and Renee’s family want answers. An inquest is scheduled for May. The tribe has hired former U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan to represent them.

Both officers involved are on leave. “To go in there with guns drawn, didn’t clear the kids out,” Black Horse said. “Why they didn’t ask for help when they knew she was in a crisis — she wasn’t threatening anybody. She wasn’t trying to hold her kids hostage. She didn’t threaten her boyfriend when she had seen him an hour earlier. She was just in a bad place, and she needed help.” The Muckleshoot community is reeling. They remember the 23-year-old as a sweet-natured mother, a domestic violence survivor, a hunter and someone with a history of depression. Danielle Bargala, Renee’s foster sister, said talking about Renee is hard, not just emotionally but because it runs counter to Muckleshoot tradition. “Usually when we lay someone to rest, we put their pictures away for a year," Bargala said. "We don’t talk about them by name. And we try to let them move on to the afterlife.

“It’s like we’re trying to balance this line now between respecting her, letting her move on, and also letting people know that what happened isn’t okay.” Bargala, a third-year law student at Seattle University, was visiting her parents on the reservation the night Renee died. When she pulled up to her parents’ house, she knew something was wrong when her niece came outside. “She was sobbing, and she had the phone in her hand. And she handed it to me and it was my mom. And she said, ‘Danni, Renee’s been shot and she didn’t make it.’” At first they were told Renee had committed suicide. They went to Renee’s house and waited for more details. “They kept moving the crime scene tape back farther and farther until we were a good half-block from her house,” Bargala said. “We all went into a tribal housing building, and it was all over the news at that point that a King County sheriff had shot somebody on the reservation.”