An active Air Force member was arrested Friday when he allegedly killed a 21-year-old woman at a military base in South Dakota, authorities said.
24-year-old Airman Quintaius Chappelle suffered a federal second-degree murder charge after the heavily disassembled body of a Sahela Sangrait that had been disassembled earlier this month. The Pennington County Sheriff's Office said.
The young woman was first reported to have gone missing in August on March 4, a hiker south of Hill City near Pennington and a hiker on the Custer County line, which was found about 50 miles from Ellsworth Air Force Base where she was killed.
Information on the motives for the murder and how Sangreit, a Box City elder resident, was killed, was not revealed by the sheriff's office. It is unknown when she died.
The Department of Justice will handle Chapelle's prosecution.
“We are responsible for the airmen for their actions, and if a member of service is found to be in violation of military or civil law, they will be punished,” Colonel Derek Oakley, commander of the Ellsworth Air Force, said in a statement in the New York Times.
Missing Person Poster Native American Sanglait showed that she was staying at the Eagle Butt with a friend but travelled to Box Elder, just a few miles from the base, and left to pick up items and travel to California.
According to The Times, a spokesman for the base's Air Force said Chappelle was an aircraft inspection traveler assigned to the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.
Chapel, who first joined the service in 2019, is in custody at the county jail.
The sheriff's office did not disclose the relationship between the suspect and the victim.
