Convict on trial for using shank to kill fellow inmate

SALEM, Ore. (KOIN) – A Marion County jury will hear opening statements on Monday in the aggravated murder trial of David Ray Bartol.

Bartol is accused of killing fellow inmate Gavin Siscel on June 2013 inside the Marion County jail.

According to prosecutors, on June 4, 2014, Siscel was watching TV inside the jail. Bartol walked over to the deputies’ desk area and grab a flashlight. Bartol is said to have put the flashlight inside the front of his pants and walked up to Siscel from behind.

Bartol pulled the flashlight from his pants and struck Siscel in the back of the head, according to court documents. Bartol then retrieved a “shank” and “plunged it into” Siscel’s left eye.

Authorities say that Bartol then took off one of his sandals and started pounding the shank over and over into Siscel’s eye as he cried out for help, yelling: “No! Why? Please stop!,” according to court documents.

After the attack, Bartol “walked away…and began howling,” according to court documents.

Siscel died several days after the attack.

Bartol is charged with one count of aggravated murder.

Earlier this year in Multnomah County, a judge sentenced Bartol to 55 years in prison for a two separate attacks. In those cases, Bartol tortured two gang associates inside an auto body shop in Southeast Portland. Both men survived their injuries.

Bartol is already serving an 18 year prison sentence for a home invasion robbery that occurred in Marion County in 2013, before the alleged stabbing inside the jail.

If convicted of aggravated murder, a jury will have to decide whether or not Bartol should be sentenced to death, life imprisonment without the possibility of release or parole or life imprisonment.