Richard Sowers, a 28-year-old Lakota Sioux man, was shot in the hallway of a downtown Sioux Falls apartment building on East 12th Street in the early hours of March 16, 2024. Police arrived shortly after 2:15 AM and found Sowers with multiple gunshot wounds to the torso; he was taken to a hospital after telling officers he had been shot but later died from his injuries, recorded as the city’s first homicide of the year.

A tenant in the building heard a disturbance, opened his door, and found Sowers on the floor and saw a man leaving the scene. That witness described the man as Native American, about six feet tall, larger build, with long black hair, a beard, and a mustache. Security camera footage showed Sowers returning to his second-floor apartment with two women, and a man later identified as 38-year-old Edward Brinkley arriving about 20 minutes after. The two women later identified Brinkley in a photo lineup.

On the evening of March 18, 2024, Edward Brinkley was arrested in the vicinity of 10th and Cliff and charged with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a violent or drug-related convicted felon; he was held on $1 million bond. The motive and the relationship between Sowers and Brinkley are still under investigation. Does anyone have information about Sowers’s movements that night or about Brinkley’s possible connection to the apartment building?