Caught in the act: Raymond Davis pleads guilty in Colorado assault case

Ex-CIA contractor, who killed 2 men in Lahore in 2011, assaulted a man over a parking spot.

DENVER:

Raymond Allen Davis, the former Central Intelligence Agency contractor who sparked a diplomatic flap in 2011 when he killed two men in Lahore, pleaded guilty on Friday to assaulting a man in the US state of Colorado in a dispute over a parking spot, prosecutors said.

Davis entered the plea in Douglas County District Court to misdemeanor third-degree assault and received a two-year probationary sentence, said Lisa Pinto, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

Pinto said Davis was also ordered to take anger management classes and write a letter of apology to the victim, Jeff Maes.

Davis was originally charged with second-degree felony assault in the altercation with Maes in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch in October 2011. Officers were sent to a bagel store parking lot on reports of a fight between the two men, according to Douglas County Sheriff’s spokesman Ron Hanavan.



Police said Davis started the fight and knocked Maes to the ground. He was arrested at the scene.

Maes also filed a civil lawsuit against Davis, saying he suffered two fractured vertebrae in the fight, along with emotional distress.

A US Army veteran and former special forces soldier, Davis grabbed worldwide headlines when he shot and killed two men whom he said were trying to rob him in Lahore in January 2011.

Davis, who was working in Pakistan at the time under a CIA contract with Xe Services, the controversial private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, said he acted in self-defense.

He was acquitted of murder and allowed to leave Pakistan after a $2.3 million payment was made to the men’s families. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said at the time that the US government did not pay the “blood money” but would not reveal who did.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2013.