Man sentenced in federal court in connection with 2017 death of Destiny Lloyd

YAKIMA – A man who pleaded guilty in connection with the murder of Destiny Lloyd on the Yakama Reservation the day after Christmas 2017 has been sentenced to three years in federal prison.

Waylon Jake Napyer, 34, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Yakima. He pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony in July in a plea agreement. Prosecutors allege that he knew about Lloyd’s killing, didn’t report it to authorities as soon as possible and disposed of the murder weapon.

Federal prosecutors and Napyer’s attorney recommended a sentence of 36 months, according to the plea agreement. A year of supervised release will follow his prison term, which Napyer requested serving at the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac.

As part of the plea agreement, Judge Mary K. Dimke dismissed an indictment with three charges against Napyer stemming from a November 2020 case. Napyer was accused of assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting in serious bodily injury and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Dimke noted that the 36-month prison sentence is an upward variant of the sentence range in Napyer’s case of 21 to 27 months.

Napyer agreed to the 36-month sentence partly because of the dismissal of the other case, according to court records. Dimke said the upward variant was warranted due to the seriousness of the case.

“In this case, a woman was murdered. It’s an incredibly serious set of circumstances,” she said. “The underlying events that took place here warrant a variant.”

Lloyd, a 23-year-old child care worker at Legends Casino Hotel in Toppenish, Washington, was last seen on the evening of Christmas Day 2017. On Dec. 28, a relative reported to the Yakama Nation police she was last seen leaving in a vehicle with friends on Christmas evening.

Her body was found on Dec. 29, 2017, by a passing motorist just off Marion Drain Road . An autopsy determined that Lloyd died from a skull fracture as the result of blunt force trauma, and her death on or about Dec. 26, 2017, was deemed a homicide.

Lloyd was well-known on the Yakama Reservation and also had connections to the Warm Springs and Umatilla reservations in Oregon.

Tahsheena Stacie Sam, 33, of White Swan has pleaded guilty in a plea agreement to second-degree murder in Indian Country. Prosecutors allege that Sam struck Lloyd in the head several times with a large wrench in a robbery attempt. Her sentencing is set for 10 a.m. Jan. 14.

Under the plea agreement, Sam could see a sentence of not less than 20 years in prison.

The cases are in federal court because Lloyd, Sam and Napyer are Native American and the killing occurred on the Yakama Reservation. Lloyd’s case is one of dozens of cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and people within and with connections to the Yakama Reservation over decades.

Lloyd was riding around with the friends who picked her up on Christmas evening when Sam and others saw she had money and decided to rob her, according to court documents. The group drove to an area near Harrah Road and Marion Drain Road, where Sam took Lloyd’s money and the group left her on the side of the road, documents state.

After leaving her there, the group worried that Lloyd might report the robbery. They drove back to where they left her and used a flashlight to follow her tracks in the snow. Sam found a large monkey wrench in the vehicle, the plea agreement says, and struck Lloyd several times on the head.

On Tuesday, Dimke asked Napyer if he wanted to make a statement.

“No ma’am,” he responded.