CEDAR RAPIDS – A Waterloo man who went on a crime spree as a teenager in February 2018, was sentenced today to eight years in federal prison. Griffin Riley Davis, age 20, received the prison term after a December 2, 2019 guilty plea to one count of possession of a firearm by a drug user.
At the guilty plea and sentencing hearings, Davis admitted that on January 21, 2018, when he was 18 years old, he was stopped for speeding in Black Hawk County, Iowa, and officers found an unloaded semiautomatic rifle with a high capacity magazine in his trunk at that time. Then, on February 5, 2018, and February 6, 2018, officers responded to shots fired incidents in Dysart and Waterloo, Iowa, respectively. Each incident involved residential homes in which people, including minors, were present. Officers found spent .40 caliber shell casings at each crime scene. On February 12, 2018, Davis was recorded in a phone call stating he was going to shoot a minor “and fan down everyone in her car.”
On February 20, 2018, officers stopped a car in Waterloo and saw Davis in the backseat. Officers smelled marijuana in the car and later found Davis hiding under a blanket. In the car, officers also found more than 40 grams of marijuana, a digital scale, and a loaded .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol. The pistol was recently stolen from a residence in Grundy County, Iowa. Later ballistics testing confirmed that the .40 caliber firearm was the same firearm that discharged at the residences in Dysart and Waterloo earlier that month.
Davis was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Leonard T. Strand. Davis was sentenced to 96 months’ imprisonment. He must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Davis is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Tim Vavricek and Justin Lightfoot, and investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Waterloo Police Department.
