U.S. airman accused of killing woman on South Dakota military base

A member of the United States Air Force has been arrested for the murder of a South Dakota woman who went missing last year, authorities said over the weekend. Sahela Sangrait, 21, had been missing almost seven months when a hiker discovered her decomposing remains in early March, according to the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office. 

An ensuing investigation determined Sangrait was killed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near the western South Dakota town of Box Elder where the woman lived, the sheriff’s office said in a statement Saturday. Quinterius Chappelle, an active-duty airman stationed at the base, faces federal charges for second-degree murder in her death. 

Chappelle is being held for the U.S. Marshals Service at the Pennington County Jail, booking records show. The U.S. Attorney’s Office will prosecute the case, according to sheriff’s office.

CBS News contacted the Ellsworth Air Force Base but did not receive an immediate reply. A spokesperson for the base told the New York Times that Chappelle was an aircraft inspection journeyman assigned to the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, who entered the Air Force in 2019.

Reported missing on Aug. 10, Sangrait was last known to be staying with a friend in Eagle Butte, a city on the Cheyenne River Reservation some 150 miles northeast of the Ellsworth base, according to a missing persons poster. When she left Eagle Butte, Sangrait said she planned to pick up some of her belongings in Box Elder before traveling to California, but the woman became unreachable after that, the poster said.

The poster identified Sangrait as Native American. In the U.S., Native American women are disproportionately targeted in murders, sexual assaults and other violent acts, on reservations as well as in nearby towns, to the point that the rate at which they go missing or are murdered has been called a national crisis. 

There were more than 5,700 reports of missing Native women and girls in 2016, according to the anti-sexual assault organization RAINN, which uses statistics from the National Crime Information Center. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimated more recently that roughly 4,200 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people remain unsolved. At least several dozen Indigenous woman are currently missing in South Dakota alone, according to the state’s missing persons website.

About The Author

Stephen Collopy

See author's posts