CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – “If I die, I’m letting him win,” said Triniti Wiley as she sat in her wheelchair in the hospital, a tangle of IVs protruding from her body and her entire right side patched in gauze and splints.
On April 11, Wiley, a 20-year-old phlebotomist, was shot 19 times by her husband Amara Barage, 22, inside their Clarksville home. Still conscious, she watched as he then turned another gun on himself and pulled the trigger. Bleeding heavily and panic rising, she grabbed her phone and called 911.
When Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived, they broke down the front door and rushed in. One deputy went to Wiley, and the other to Barage. As the deputy tending to Wiley was soothing her, she heard the other say, “The suspect has no pulse.”
“In that moment, a lot of people would think that I would be happy. I loved him – I loved him so much,” Wiley told Clarksville Now through heavy tears. “It hurt me more than anything to know that he could shoot me like that. I loved him so much, even after what he did.”
The sun rose and set on him
Wiley and Barage met in Texas when she was only 16 and Barage was a 19-year-old specialist in the Army. He later became a supply sergeant.
She said her husband was very quiet, and it was one of the things she liked most about him. “He had a different way of letting you know he cared about you,” she said. “I loved the way he loved me. He loved me in a way that I needed at that time in my life.”
She said that for her, the sun set and rose on him.
In 2022, Barage received orders to be stationed at Fort Campbell, and last April, the couple arrived in Clarksville. All was well and normal until January 2023.
Red flags started appearing
According to Wiley, Barage had some emotional issues and trauma stemming from his childhood. “I had begged him and begged him and begged him to go to therapy. Your childhood can come back to haunt you in your adulthood,” Wiley said. “It messed up our relationship because it came back to our home.”
In January, the arguments between the couple increased, and Barage refused to go to therapy.
“In February, things really went downhill,” Wiley said. “We had a very big argument. We talked about things, especially children and how we saw ourselves with children. It was very different.”
Wiley said she had changed, and she was no longer the 16-year-old girl she was when they met. Their differences were becoming apparent, and she realized that as much as she loved him, they were no longer compatible. Wiley told Barage they should get a divorce.
“At first he took it OK. He was like, ‘Yeah, we can live together until you find somewhere to go,'” Wiley said. “I said, ‘So, I can leave in August.'” Her plan was to move to San Antonio, Texas, to go to school, but it wouldn’t start until then.
Even after this, the couple tried again, with Barage even agreeing to go to couple’s therapy. They both made attempts to rekindle their relationship, but eventually they gave up, and things got worse.
“Things started getting petty; he would come to me randomly and tell me to get out of the house,” she said.
First big fight over divorce papers
When it came time to sign the divorce papers, Wiley realized it included a quitclaim deed, meaning she had to give up the house. “I did not want the house,” Wiley said. “The house was a big investment and a lot for me at 20, so I didn’t want it.”
The issue, however, was that Barage had agreed to let Wiley stay until she could move back to Texas in August. With his recent behavior, she knew he would throw her out, and legally, she could do nothing. So she told Barage she wouldn’t sign.
“A friend of mine had told me that divorces get messy,” she said. “I never thought that ours would get as messy as it did. That’s not what I wanted. My parents had a messy divorce, and I didn’t want that for myself.”
Wiley stressed that she tried to keep the peace.
One night, she came home from working a late shift, and she was getting ready to go to the gym when Barage walked in. He got in her bed and refused to leave the room. Barage told her, “I’m going to make your life a living hell. Nothing you do is ever going to be easy again until you get out of my house.”
She walked outside and contacted a person close to Barage and asked them to try and get him to see reason. However, when she came back in, he was waiting for her at the door. He pushed her into the wall and told her to get out.
“He had never put his hands on me,” Wiley said. “He had never done anything before to make me think that he would do anything like this.”
As she was heading back to her room, he tried tripping her multiple times. When she was in the bathroom getting changed, Barage walked in on her while she was undressed and used the bathroom in front of her. Later he pushed her down and charged after her, so she grabbed a pair of scissors to protect herself.
Gripping the scissors in her hands, she told Barage not to touch her. She went to the police station, where she asked law enforcement to come back and help. But when law enforcement arrived, Barage revealed a video he had taken of Wiley while she was holding the scissors, and he told the responding officer he felt threatened and unsafe. Wiley was arrested.
Later, he posted her bond, claiming he didn’t know she would get arrested. But as a condition of her release, Wiley was not allowed to return home, and for the next couple of weeks, Wiley stayed with friends.
Several weeks after her arrest, Wiley received a text from her husband asking her to come over so they could talk about things.
“I come over and he wants me to admit that I cheated on him, that I was the reason our relationship ended. Basically he wanted me to say that he didn’t do anything and it was all me,” Wiley said. She refused everything, telling him they both had a part in their relationship ending.
“He called the police on me because he didn’t like what I said. They took me to jail again for a violation of COR.”
‘He did not want me to come back to the house’
On April 11, Wiley and Barage had a court date for the violation of COR. After reviewing everything, the judge decided to amend the COR and allow Wiley to return to the residence. Barage was upset and “stormed out of the courtroom,” according to Wiley.
She returned home to get her clothes and move out, and, with the help of a locksmith, she was able to reenter.
“I saw my cat; I had not seen her in so many days,” she said. “I hugged her, I was so happy to see her.”
Wiley called her mother, who told her Barage had called and said some things that were “alarming.” They contacted Barage’s brigade, who “assured her that nothing would happen to her.”
Wiley was on the phone with her father, preparing to leave, when the front door opened and Barage stood in the doorway.
“He said, ‘I told you not to come back to the f***ing house,'” Wiley recalled.
She ran and locked the door to her bedroom. Within seconds, Barage had broken the door off the hinges and attacked her. Wiley said he punched her twice in the face and slammed her head against the wall. When she fell, he kicked her several times.
Wiley’s father was still on the phone.
“He heard the first half of me being beat,” Wiley said. “I hung up the phone because I didn’t know if I was going to live, and I didn’t want my father to hear me being killed.
“I begged him (Barage) and said, ‘I’ll leave, I’ll leave, I’ll leave!’ And he said, ‘Nah, f*** that’ and pulled out a Glock 19, and he shot me 19 times. He shot me 19 times; I have 19 bullet wounds in my body,” Wiley said.
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After shooting Wiley, he walked around to the other side of the bed and pulled out a smaller gun. Barage pressed the gun to his chest and pulled the trigger. Wiley recalls hearing two shots and watched as he hit the ground.
“I remember his feet were sitting up. … All I can see are his feet in my nightmares,” Wiley said shakily. “When he was alive, his feet were standing up, but when he died, they were slacked. All I could see were his feet when they took me out of that room.”
The deputies who rushed in had little information on what they were facing, said Sheriff John Fuson.
“The role of the law enforcement officer is difficult and dangerous as officers often work with limited information as they delve into the unknown. The deputies that initially responded, Deputy Larson and Deputy Prichard, showed tremendous courage knowing they were going to an extreme situation,” Fuson said.
“I am sure their stress was high, but they responded quickly, without question. I am very proud of them for their actions. I have no doubt that their fast response helped save Triniti’s life.”
The ambulance drove Triniti Wiley out to nearby field where she was flown by LifeFlight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. At Vanderbilt, she said she received compassion from the nurses, doctors and others.
“They never met my anger with anger. They were always so patient with me. And that was what I needed when I got here,” Wiley said. “Because I wasn’t OK. Mentally, I wasn’t OK. I didn’t know how I was going to survive; I felt like my life was over.”
Message to those living with domestic violence
Weeks afterward, Wiley is in recovery, able to leave the hospital but bound to a wheelchair as she undergoes physical and occupational therapy for the right side of her body.
She has a metal rod in her right leg from her knee to her ankle, and another in her right arm from the elbow to the wrist.
“Where I’m at with my healing is I have good days and bad days,” Wiley said. “Some days I feel on top of the world and like I can conquer, and other days my whole body hurts and I feel like I can’t do anything.
“It sounds extremely cliche, but I would have never thought it would be me,” Wiley said. “My husband was not violent before we began our divorce. He had never even raised his voice at me, let alone raised a hand at me.”
Wiley hopes that people can learn from her and when they think they’re in danger, find ways to get out safely.
“Unfortunately, I lost the man that I loved in the process. And I’ll always love him. You’ll always love that person, but you’ve got to choose yourself. You’ve got to love yourself more,” she said.
You never truly know someone or their mental state, she said, especially when it comes to divorce and domestic disputes.
“Don’t ignore the signs. There’s always some type of sign. You put it in your mind that you know this person, you’ve been with them so long, they’d never do this to you. If you would have asked me the day before I got shot, if my husband would have ever laid a hand on my like this – if he would have shot me – I’d say ‘No. That’s drastic. It’s deranged,'” she said.
“Never say what somebody won’t do to you.”
To get help
For help finding safety from domestic violence, call the Clarksville Area Urban Ministries SafeHouse Domestic Violence Hotline, 931-552-6900. Calls are answered 24/7.
If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. Calls are free, confidential, and are answered 24/7.