As TJ Ferres began to address the court, Judge Daniel Stahnke said he struggled to understand how a night of drinking between two friends ended with one fatally shooting the other.
But what Stahnke was certain of, he said, was that Ferres was not acting in self-defense as he claimed, when he shot 37-year-old Ian Patrick McKay to death in his kitchen and then stomped on his head.
“I don’t know why you killed Ian that night, but I don’t believe you were under any threat,” Stahnke said, adding that Ferres’ version of events makes no sense.
“Your callous disregard to taking a life shocks me a little bit,” he told Ferres before handing down an 18-year prison sentence, or 220 months, the high end of the sentencing range. The sentence evoked claps and audible approval from McKay’s friends and family seated in the gallery.
Stahnke quickly hushed the audience and told Ferres he’ll probably leave the courtroom still thinking he’s done nothing wrong.
“I don’t think you get it,” he said after pointing out the puzzled look on Ferres’ face. “What you did was wrong. You had no right to shoot him.”
Vancouver police responded shortly after 4 a.m. Jan. 22, 2017, to a disturbance involving a weapon at Ferres’ residence in the Hearthwood neighborhood. When officers arrived, they found McKay on the kitchen floor with a gunshot wound to the side of his body. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
Detectives determined Ferres and McKay had been drinking and got into an argument that turned deadly, court records say.
Ferres, 57, told detectives he had several friends over to his home the evening prior, including McKay, and they all went to a nearby bar on Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard. Ferres, his girlfriend and McKay all returned to his house at about 1 a.m. Between then and the shooting, “there was an interaction between (Ferres) and (McKay) in the kitchen causing (Ferres) to be ‘scared.’ Other than saying (McKay) kept getting weird, (Ferres) could not articulate or provide details as to how or why (McKay) scared him,” the affidavit reads.
Ferres left the kitchen, walked to his bedroom and grabbed a pump action shotgun. He then returned to the kitchen, pumped the gun and shot McKay once. Afterward, Ferres woke his sleeping girlfriend and asked her to call 911, according to court documents.
Ferres’ girlfriend told detectives that she found McKay lying on the kitchen floor, unresponsive, and when she was on the phone with dispatchers, saw Ferres stomp on McKay’s head several times, the affidavit states.
Ferres pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder in Clark County Superior Court. However, as he spoke to the judge Monday, he said he deserved the lowest possible sentence, 10 1/4 years, or to be acquitted.
“It’s too late to be acquitted,” Stahnke said, adding that Ferres no longer had a presumption of innocence.
Ferres said he was put in a position in which he had to defend himself. McKay was intoxicated and talking about killing people, he said, and when he asked him to stop, he turned on Ferres. He said McKay threatened to break his neck and had hit him earlier in the night, knocking his glasses off and breaking them.
Ferres told Stahnke that he had heard stories about McKay being a violent drunk and saw it firsthand that night.
However, when the police were called that night, Ferres told them that McKay had not threatened him and was unarmed, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kristine Foerster said.
Stahnke pointed out that if Ferres believed McKay was dangerous, he shouldn’t have let him inside his house and that he had multiple opportunities to turn him away or seek help.
‘Drastic choice’
Several of McKay’s family members were given the opportunity to speak before Stahnke handed down his sentence, imploring the judge to give the maximum allowed.
The mother of McKay’s two young daughters told the court that Ferres deserves “to spend the rest of his life without really living.” Because of his actions, she said McKay will never see his daughters’ first day of school, participate in another holiday, meet their boyfriends or walk them down the aisle.
“You made a drastic choice that should have drastic and equal consequences,” she said.
McKay’s daughters also wrote letters to the court expressing their sadness and wishes for Ferres to be locked up forever.
Both of McKay’s sisters described him as a kind, family man who would give the shirt off his back to anyone. His mother, Sharon, called Ferres’ actions monstrous, and his father, Gary, told Ferres that he’s in this situation because he’s a “stupid man” and is “rotten inside.”
After the sentencing, McKay’s sister, Amie McKay, told The Columbian that no sentence will ever be enough time.
“My brother will still be gone,” she said. “But at least he got the maximum he could get.”
