Man gets prison for having sawed-off shotgun

An Idaho Falls man will spend more than three years in prison for having a sawed-off shotgun.

Timothy Scott Murphy, 25, was sentenced in U.S. District Court on Wednesday to 39 months in prison, consecutive to the state sentence he is currently serving, followed by three years of supervised release for possession of an unregistered firearm, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson said.

Judge B. Lynn Winmill also ordered Murphy to forfeit the weapon, which was made from a Maverick 12-gauge shotgun. It had a barrel length of 16 inches, but the minimum legal length for shotguns — without being registered with the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record — is 18 inches.

The charge came after an incident in February, when Murphy barricaded himself with a sawed-off shotgun inside his Chelsea Court apartment on 12th Street when the Idaho Department of Correction Parole Commission issued a felony warrant.

Police said Murphy wasn’t threatening officers with the shotgun, but he was resisting arrest. During the three- to four-hour standoff, he threatened suicide until police talked him out of the apartment and confiscated the weapon.

The incident caused an evacuation of some homes on the east side of town.