Court filing: Niece shot Warm Springs couple several times

New details were released in a federal court filing Thursday in a Warm Springs double-shooting that left a couple seriously injured in their home Wednesday morning and led to the arrest of their 24-year-old niece nearby a short time later.

The shooting was reported by a family member at 8:24 a.m. at a home along U.S. Highway 26 on the Warm Springs Indian reservation, said an affidavit compiled by FBI Special Agent Daniel Baringer, a member of the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team and the Warm Springs Safe Trails TAsk Force.

Baringer’s affidavit was filed along with a criminal complaint accusing Rhyan Leigh Smith, 24, of Warm Springs, with six counts of assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a dangerous weapon with intent to do bodily harm and assault resulting in serious bodily injury to victims Bernadette Smith and her husband, Zach Chambers.

According to Baringer’s affidavit, Rhyan Smith, the victims’ niece, came to the home around 2 a.m. and spoke to her father, telling him she was going to stay there for the day.

The victims were in the master bedroom when the Rhyan Smith knocked on the bedroom door, he said.

According to the court document, Rhyan was standing at the door, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, when she asked Chambers about the kids at the Warm Springs K-8 school, and the news that some of them were cutting themselves.

Baringer said Chambers told investigators he spoke to the suspect for about 30 seconds, then told her he was going to bed and started to shut the door, when Rhyan Smith opened fire with a pistol, shooting Chambers five times.

The FBI agent said Bernadette Smith said she was in the bathroom when she heard a gunshot around 8 a.m. and came out to see her niece shooting Chambers with a black automatic pistol she’d never seen before.

The woman tried to stop Rhyan Smith, Baringer said, but she then shot her several times, putting her in intensive care at St. Charles Bend. Her arm was also broken as a result of the shooting, the FBI agent said.

Witnesses inside the home told investigators Rhyan Smith ran out of the home with the gun. Rhyan Smith’s father told police when he called on the shooting that his daughter had shot two people and was hiding in a car in the yard.

When police arrived, he said, they found her hiding in the sagebrush about 100 yards from the home, lying on the ground next to an AR-15 assault rifle.

In a car parked in the yard, Baringer said officers recovered a 9 mm pistol, along with several AR-15 magazines and loose ammunition.

The alleged shooter’s father told investigators his daughter and her aunt “do not like each other, and are always bickering.”

The suspect’s grandmother said she heard four shots and saw her granddaughter run outside to one of the cars in their yard and get a larger gun. She said she then ran inside, found the two victims on the floor bleeding and “fashioned tourniquets for the, and began to pray for them and keep them calm until the police arrived,” Baringer wrote.

The FBI said Wednesday the female victim, a tribal member, was in critical condition at St. Charles Bend and the male victim was in serious condition. The hospital has not provided updated conditions.

Rhyan Smith was lodged in the Multnomah County Jail in Portland and made her initial court appearance Thursday before a federal magistrate.