An airman was charged with second-degree murder in connection with the killing of a woman on an Air Force base, authorities said.
Quinterius Chappelle, 24, is accused of killing Sahela Sangrait, 21, whose body was found March 4, months after she disappeared last year, the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office said Saturday on Facebook.
Deputies discovered Sangrait’s “badly decomposed body” after a hiker reported finding the remains, the sheriff’s office said.
Chappelle, an active-duty airman stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in western South Dakota, is accused of killing Sangrait on the base, according to the sheriff’s office. She was reported missing on Aug. 10.
It was not immediately clear what the relationship between Chappelle and Sangrait was.
Ellsworth Air Force Base did not immediately respond to a phone call or an email seeking comment Sunday night. The Air Force also did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
A spokesman for the base told The New York Times that Chappelle was an aircraft inspection journeyman assigned to the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and that he entered the service on April 30, 2019.
Military officials were working with local law enforcement in the investigation, Ellsworth’s commander, Col. Derek Oakley, told the paper.
“We hold airmen accountable for their actions, and if service members are found in violation of military or civilian law, they will be punished,” he said, according to the Times.
A missing persons poster shared on Facebook indicated Sangrait was Native American.
She was last known to be staying with a friend in Eagle Butte, about 160 miles northeast of the Air Force base, according to the poster. Sangrait left the friend’s house and said she was going to Box Elder, where she was from, to get some belongings before she went on a planned trip to California.
It is not clear when she traveled to Box Elder, which borders Ellsworth Air Force Base, or whether she made it there at all.
Chappelle is being held in the Pennington County Jail. He was arrested Friday, and no bond has been set, according to jail records.
It was not immediately clear whether Chappelle had legal representation, and a request for information sent to the jail Sunday night was not immediately returned.
The U.S. attorney’s office for South Dakota will prosecute the case, according to the sheriff’s office. The U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.
The investigation included the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, the Rapid City Police Department, the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit, the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
“This investigation has been an excellent collaboration of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in our area,” the sheriff’s office said.
The office asked anyone with information about Sangrait’s killing to contact the FBI’s Rapid City office.
