This story was originally published by the Daily Montanan.

Darrell Ehrlick
Daily Montanan

In a federal courtroom in Billings on Tuesday, U.S. attorneys charged Murrell D. Deela, a Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement officer, with sexual assault of a 15-year-old Northern Cheyenne girl.

Deela has denied the charges.

But the charges against him are a part of a two-year history of Deela’s troubled career in law enforcement while on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, which has included shooting a man, allegedly breaking the bones of a teenager’s face, a payout from the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and an alleged arson attempt to cover the evidence of sexual assault committed by the former military sniper.

Meanwhile, tribal leaders had already banned Deela from the reservation after repeated problems with the officer. It appears that leadership within the BIA transferred Deela out of state after the issues arose on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. BIA officials have not responded to repeated requests for comment about this case from the Daily Montanan. It is also unclear if Deela is still employed by the BIA.

It’s not the first time a BIA officer recently sexually assaulted a Northern Cheyenne tribal member. In a case that concluded at the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals several months ago, judges there said the federal government was responsible for the actions of former BIA officer Dana Bullcoming who had raped an intoxicated woman while on duty, telling her that she would lose custody of her children if she didn’t have sex with him.

New charges

Earlier this summer, attorneys for two juvenile Northern Cheyenne girls brought separate civil suits against Deela — one alleging excessive force for punching a girl in custody so hard that it broke her orbital bone. The other charged that Deela had violated another Cheyenne girl’s civil rights when Deela allegedly sexually abused her on Aug. 7, 2024.

That incident served as the basis for the FBI investigation that culminated in charges being filed on Oct. 20 against Deela and his subsequent arrest and appearance in federal in court in Billings on Tuesday.

Charging documents, which were unsealed earlier this week, allege that at around 11:15 p.m. on Aug. 7, 2024, Deela was called to the Cheyenne Depot gas station in Lame Deer for the report of an intoxicated female. When he and another officer arrived, a girl matching the description given by police dispatchers ran, and they managed to stop her, bringing her back to Deela’s squad car.

“(She) was crying hysterically and slurring her words,” the charging documents state. A preliminary breath test revealed a 0.215% breath-alcohol content.

Deela reported to dispatchers and the other officer that he would take the girl back to her grandmother’s house, about a mile away. A short time later, he radioed that she was back at the residence.

However, investigators believe that he took the victim beyond the house and to the People’s Park, where he committed sexual assault, according to the court documents.

The next day, the victim made a report of the sexual assault to federal authorities, and she turned over the clothing she was wearing to the FBI crime lab.

On Aug. 9, the BIA chief and a FBI special agent reviewed the video of the patrol, which included the victim getting out of the car and going to her grandmother’s house. However, Deela said that he was unable to download the entire video because of technical problems with the video system. The chief told Deela to bring his patrol car back on Aug. 11 so that an employee with proper training and knowledge could download all the video.

On Aug. 11, at around 2:15 a.m., Deela radioed into dispatchers that his patrol car was on fire outside his house, according to court documents.

“Officer Deela’s patrol vehicle was severely burned from the front dashboard of the vehicle through the rear of the vehicle. The Watchguard system was severely burned during the fire,” the court documents stated of the video recording unit. “An ATF certified fire investigator determined the fire which burned Officer Deela’s patrol vehicle was an incendiary fire, i.e., a fire intentionally ignited under circumstances where it should not be.”

Though the Watchguard video unit was severely damaged by the fire, technicians with the manufacturer, Motorola, were able to recover some video files from the unit.

The video obtained by the company and recounted in court files said that at 11:26 p.m., Deela parked his vehicle in People’s Park facing the bleachers, turned off the headlights, where he took the intoxicated teenager out of the vehicle and away from the camera. At 11:42 p.m., they returned to the vehicle where they arrived at the victim’s grandmother’s house about five minutes later.

“Based on the conversation of the (victim), she was led to believe she could avoid going to jail by engaging in in a sexual act with Officer Deela,” the court documents state.

The court documents then reference the violation of federal law, which include sexual contact, penetration and oral sex.

Deela denied the entire account of the sexual assault, stating repeatedly that he had only taken the victim directly to her grandmother’s house. He also consented to a DNA sample.

Earlier this year, the FBI crime lab confirmed that there were two semen stains on the victim’s pants.

“The FBI laboratory conclude the male DNA results found in semen stain one was 96 octillion times more likely if Officer Deela was a contributor than if an unknown and unrelated person was a contributor,” the court documents state. “The FBI Laboratory concluded that the male DNA results found in semen stain two was 99,000 times more like if Officer Deela was a contributor than if an unknown and unrelated person was the contributor.”

A longer past

But Deela’s legal troubles don’t stop with the case filed this week.

He also faces two related civil cases centering on police brutality, including a civil suit by the same victim in the sexual assault. Attorneys John Heenan and Timothy Bechtold, both of whom successfully litigated the Bullcoming case, have sued on the victims’ behalf.

However, even before that, the federal government paid out $800,000 to the estate of another Northern Cheyenne man who had been beaten with a baton, pepper sprayed, tased and then eventually shot twice by Deela. Authorities settled the case involving Deela in March 2025, before it went to trial.

Deela’s actions on the reservation became so difficult that the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council issued a proclamation in September 2024 banning him from being on the reservation.

In addition to case of the sexual assault, Deela was also involved in a case of assaulting a different Northern Cheyenne teenager. In that lawsuit, attorneys claim that Deela assaulted the girl badly enough to break her orbital bone in her face after punching her.

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court, Deela punched the minor on July 5, 2024, after a powwow, when her friend fled from Deela. According to the court documents, Deela was chasing the young woman’s friend, but had apprehended her.

After shoving her against a car several times, Deela accused her of being drunk, according to the documents.

Sometime after that, the young woman tangled up with Deela, at one point going to the ground. They scuffled and Deela hit her in the left eye with his right fist. Deela apparently suffered from hand injuries after punching her in the face, according to court documents.

The death of Arlin Bordeaux

Even before August 2024, Deela’s conduct had already become the subject of a lawsuit where the federal government settled a wrongful death lawsuit in which the officer had been accused of using excessive force, including shooting a Northern Cheyenne man in the back for what started off as a “low misdemeanor.”

Though the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office had cleared Deela in an internal investigation, the U.S. government still paid out $800,000 to Bordeaux’s estate after an expert witness and former Seattle Police Lt. David T. Sweeney submitted an investigation into the shooting of Bordeaux.

The report as well as court documents raise the issue of how much force was necessary to subdue Bordeaux, as well as calling into question how a report of trespassing wound up with Bordeaux being beaten with a police baton, pepper sprayed, tased and then shot twice.

Originally, Bordeaux was reported wandering in a yard by a property owner on Dec. 2, 2021 in Lame Deer.

Two officers, including Deela, who arrived second on the scene, had tried chasing Bordeaux and subduing him for what appeared to be trespassing. Later testing revealed that Bordeaux had methamphetamine in his system.

Bordeaux had evaded BIA Officer Fredric Gygi multiple times before Deela arrived. Gygi had tased Bordeaux twice, used the direct contact mode of the stun gun, as well as deploying pepper spray twice and striking Bordeaux four times with his police-issued baton.

Deela reported that after Bordeaux had been tased and brought to the ground, he saw Bordeaux reach for Gygi’s taser, warned him, then shot him twice, striking Bordeaux in the back with a 9-mm Glock.

An investigatory report, prepared by Sweeney, points out that the incident began with “low-level misdemeanor crimes” but escalated when officers chased Bordeaux, deploying three different forms of restraint on him.

That report, used as part of the court case against the federal government, shows Bordeaux had not attempted to hurt or assault Gygi.

“In my opinion, using a taser was not reasonable for the threat level being displayed by Mr. Bordeaux,” the report said. “It was not necessary to apply the taser…. The subject kept walking but was not exhibiting any physical or mechanical defiance to the officer’s control or toward the officer. Point of fact, Officer Gygi never even attempted any form of control or deescalation prior to the use of force.”

The report also mentioned that during the scuffle when Gygi had Bordeaux on the ground, the officer gave conflicting and contradictory commands, which could have led to confusion. The report and the material from the crime scene show that Bordeaux was crawling away from the officers when he was shot by Deela.

“Two times (Gygi) tased a passive-restraint individual that posed no active threat toward him and he got kicked. Now, he apparently believed that more force was warranted,” the report said.

However, the report by Sweeney also shows that the taser had already been deployed twice on Bordeaux, meaning it could no longer be used as a threat to the officers except as a stun gun with direct contact.

“There was no way for him to use the (taser) to incapacitate the officers,” the report said. “No BIA investigator ever asked either officer if Bordeeaux was still a threat to incapacitate with an empty taser in his hand.”

The 82-page report, which includes taser logs, shows that Deela also fired the fatal shots that killed Bordeaux.

“I find this use of force unreasonable ,” Sweeney said. “He was on his knees with the taser in his left hand. He was not even upright on his knees. His torso was low enough to the ground so that Deela shot him in the back…None of these crimes would justify the officer’s use of lethal force.”

The former police lieutenant and expert on the use of tasers also said that Bordeaux was not a threat on the ground with the empty taser.

“To use lethal force by shooting a kneeling man who is not an immediate threat to cause death or serious physical injury in the back is not reasonable,” Sweeney’s report said. “There was no evidence present that at the time he was shot in the back, Mr. Bordeaux was attempting to evade arrest by flight.”

Sweeney’s report also outlines a law enforcement concept of equal, proportional force, which would have been construed as reasonable. In a concluding section on the use of force, Sweeney outlines 11 reasons why Deela shooting Bordeaux twice should not be consider “justified use of lethal force.”

Deela’s background

According to deposition transcripts, Deela had been hired by the BIA in November 2020. But before that, he told attorneys that he had been involved in combat appointments with the military, including service in Afghanistan.

Deela said that he was a sniper team leader for the U.S. Army as well as a trained sniper, and a machine gunner for the U.S. Marines.

He told attorneys during questioning about Bordeaux’s death that he had deployed his weapon as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces in more than 10 “firefights.”

When he was interviewed in May 2024 about the death of Bordeaux, he said that he was involved in one other officer-involved shooting during his tenure at the BIA.

Deela also said between the time he was hired by the BIA in November 2020 until May 2024, he had deployed his taser more than 50 times. And of those times, Deela told investigators that during at least 21 of those taser deployments, he used the weapon more than once.

Deela’s deposition in the Bordeaux case took place two months to the date before the incident involving the alleged sexual assault.

Just days after that, the Tribal Council of the Northern Cheyenne adopted Resolution No. 141 for 2024, which said that it learned about the allegations against Deela.

“The council has grave concerns about the safety of individuals within the reservation if Officer Deela continues to work on the reservation while Office of Justice Services investigates his alleged misconduct,” the resolution reads in part, as justification for banishing him.

Tribal members asked for his immediate transfer, and requested the BIA issue a final report to the council by the end of that month. It’s unclear whether the BIA complied with the report request, but it appears that Deela was barred from the reservation and transferred.