Through the dog door, 16-year-old Gabriel Davies entered the home of his mother's ex-boyfriend last year with a plan.
Whatever it was, the night ended in bullets and bloodshed. On Friday he learned the consequences: He will be imprisoned until he's nearly 30.
Davies and his accomplice, Justin Yoon, both now 17, were sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison in an emotional hearing. They pleaded guilty in September to second-degree murder for the Aug. 28, 2022, killing of 51-year-old Daniel McCaw.
McCaw's mother, Veronica, described for the court the horrific scene she saw when she entered her son's Orting home. The details were difficult to square with the well-kept young men led into the courtroom.
She spoke about how high the blood had spattered in her son's home, and how he had rotted before anyone found him. Veronica McCaw said the boys deserved life in prison, and if the death penalty were an option in Washington state, she'd ask for that, too.
"I wonder how they sleep at night seeing the bloody scene in the house and knowing that this should not happen to any person," Veronica McCaw said. "Shame on them."
Davies' attorney, meanwhile, said his client was an exceptional student while held at Pierce County's juvenile detention center, and Yoon was described as spending hours decorating his pod with snowflakes for Christmas and learning a correction officer's favorite song on piano.
The twisting story of McCaw's murder shocked the Puget Sound as Olympia first rallied around Davies', who seemed to have disappeared on his way to football practice last August. The community then reeled when he was arrested on charges of murder and burglary shortly after he turned up. He was found just a few miles from where his car had been abandoned in a remote area of Thurston County. There was blood in the car, and Davies' phone was nearby, smashed.
Prosecutors accused Davies of staging his disappearance to avoid charges.
Surveillance video showed him and Yoon approaching McCaw's backyard in the early hours of Aug. 28, three days before Davies vanished. Davies later led investigators to where he'd dumped a 9 mm handgun and a .45-caliber pistol near the Old Olympia Brewery in Tumwater. The weapons matched the caliber of bullets in McCaw's body, and detectives recovered more than a dozen fixed blades and throwing knives.
After the arrest, Davies' father blamed McCaw's "biker buddies," telling a Thurston County detective his son had been directed to steal something from a safe in McCaw's home and had threatened to harm him if he didn't follow through. The father said Davies confided in Yoon, and the two made a plan to steal the item.
Pierce County Sheriff's Department detectives connected McCaw to the Amigos Motorcycle Club, a support club of the notorious Bandidos Motorcycle Club, but police reports released to The News Tribune didn't show evidence that club members played a role in the killing.
Veronica McCaw spoke to some of the mystery surrounding her son's safe when she addressed the court.
"And by the way, for inquiring minds, there was no million dollars in the safe," she said. "I rolled $432.02."
She shamed the boys for murdering her son for what might have been in the safe. Court records don't point to that as a motive, and other possible motives aren't laid out.
McCaw said her son was their family's "Rambo." He loved to hunt and fish, she said, and regardless of how anyone else felt about him, he was loved, and now he's missed. She brought to court a printed photo of Dan McCaw's German Shepherd, Saiga, lounging inside her home where he now lives. The dog now has post-traumatic stress, she said, after laying with her son for five days trying to wake him.
Attorneys for Davies and Yoon, Brett Purtzer and Angela Horwath, respectively, told the court that there was nothing that could excuse their clients actions, but they asked that the court take into account their youthfulness and the hardships they faced growing up. Purtzer said state and federal courts have noted that a person's brain isn't fully formed until they're 25.
Davies had a mostly dysfunctional home life, Purtzer said, until the last few years when his parents divorced and his father remarried. Yoon grew up a child of immigrants, Horwath said, and he had trouble fitting in because of cultural differences between his family and his classmates. But he found friendship in Davies, the attorney said, and the two bonded over shared interests.
"When I met with Justin, I was told of the horrific events, and that was my reaction, this is absolutely horrific, how can this person in front of me have participated in this horrific crime?" Horwath said.
Yoon spoke slowly Friday when given a chance to address the court, telling Judge Susan Adams he was sorry for hurting a lot of people.
"I'm sorry to the victim's family," Yoon said. "I'm sorry for taking a son from a mother and father. I'm sorry for everyone I left. And I will make sure that I live the rest of my life making this right."
Davies said he would never forget the lives he's affected, and he wished that he could take back his actions. He appeared to tear up, and he said he was sorry for lying and being deceitful to many people. He said he's tried to better himself over the past year.
"I'm a kid that made a mistake, and know it was a horrible mistake," Davies said. "But that does not define who I am, and I will never let that be who I am."
Adams said she had taken into account the difficulties defendants faced in their youth, including a doctor's report detailing Davies' ADHD diagnosis and his immaturity, but she said McCaw's death was not a situation where two boys impulsively committed an act of violence.
"The crime committed here was nothing short of horrific and deliberate," Adams said.
The judge said she had to take the totality of circumstances into account in deciding a fair and just sentence, and she didn't find that the low end of the sentencing range, 123 months, as prosecutors and defense attorneys had recommended, was enough.
"There's nothing that I can say today that brings Mr. McCaw back," the judge said. "I take no pleasure in presiding over a sentencing like this today. It is pain for everyone."
