One-Time Boy Hero Gets 32 Years For Double Murder
A young man who was a hero at age 7 is a convicted double murderer at 19.
Shawn C. Ryan, of Sacramento, Calif., admitted Wednesday in Adams County Superior Court that there was enough evidence to convict him of killing two fellow drug dealers near Ritzville on June 16.
In 1984, Ryan received a big plaque from the California Legislature and high praise from then-Gov. George Deukmejian at the state capitol.
Ryan was credited with saving his mother’s life by waking her after he found her nearly unconscious on a burning mattress. As the fire grew, he may have saved other lives as well by going door to door to warn nearly 20 other residents of their apartment building.
Adams County Judge Richard Miller sentenced Ryan to 32 years in prison after he admitted in what is known as an Alford plea that there was enough evidence to convict him of one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.
The plea was part of a bargain with Prosecutor David Sandhaus, who had charged Ryan with two counts of first-degree murder. The surviving first-degree murder charge applied to the second of two men Ryan was accused of shooting while they were driving along Danekas Road about 2-1/2 miles east of Ritzville.
“Throughout our whole investigation, what has surfaced most predominantly is that his motive was paranoia,” which is a common symptom of methamphetamine use, Sheriff Mike Kline said. “People become so paranoid that they have no friends and can’t trust anyone.”
Separate autopsy and toxicology reports showed both victims - Shawn S. Chamberlain, 24, of Kennewick, Wash., and Aubrey C. Cameron, 34, who grew up in the Coeur d’Alene area and was living in the Tri-Cities - were highly intoxicated with amphetamines.
Ryan told the court Wednesday that he also had been using methamphetamine at the time of the shootings. He said he came from Sacramento to work for Chamberlain, who was a drug dealer and claimed to be a “hit man.”
“Mr. Chamberlain kept telling me about him being a hit man and sniping people from the highway and killing people,” Ryan said. “I was scared to death of him.”
At the time of the shootings, court documents indicate, Ryan was in the back seat of a car being driven by Cameron. Chamberlain was reclining in the front passenger seat, and all three men were armed.
“When I shot them, I didn’t have any thoughts - I just know I was afraid,” Ryan said. “I heard the click of a gun and I thought I was going to be killed.”
Citing an earlier confession Ryan gave, Prosecutor Sandhaus said Ryan killed Chamberlain with a single bullet in the back of the head from a .44-caliber Magnum handgun. Ryan told authorities he killed Cameron the same way because Cameron failed to say or do anything when Chamberlain was shot.
Sandhaus said Ryan grabbed the steering wheel, stopped the car with the emergency brake and dumped Cameron’s body by the side of the road. Chamberlain’s body was dumped along another road about a mile west, and the car was abandoned near Ellensburg.
Aided by a series of tips, sheriff’s officers found Ryan - and his blood-spattered tennis shoes - about three weeks later in a Sacramento jail, where he was being held on a burglary charge. By that time, officers had a mountain of evidence against Ryan and he confessed.
, DataTimes