Man charged in Sioux Falls’ 8th homicide of 2024
Authorities have charged a Sioux Falls man with murder, following a shooting in northwestern Sioux Falls this weekend.
Court documents say Sioux Falls police were at 3:41 a.m. Saturday to an apartment in the 800 block of West Bailey Street by a woman who wanted assistance removing a man named Casey Shaffer from her apartment.
Officers said the woman accused Shaffer of allegedly sexually assaulting her juvenile son, which Shaffer had denied, documents state. She told them that Shaffer had been staying in her apartment for two days, though she had been gone since sometime on Friday, documents said.
Authorities at Monday’s police briefing said that the apartment was also Shaffer’s primary residence.
As police approached the apartment, they noticed the door was already open, and court documents say as officers entered, Shaffer was lying on the floor dead of multiple gunshot wounds.
During a search of the apartment, documents say that authorities found a credit card with the name “Dylan Farmer” on it.
That led detectives to search the department’s in-house records system, where they found a Friday interaction between an officer and Farmer that happened after police had been sent to the Minnehaha County Jail for suspicious activity.
Court documents describing footage from the officer’s body camera and incar footage say Farmer originally told an officer he witnessed a murder, but then began to make statements including, “I did the right thing” and “I shot a guy.”
The officer said there was no information regarding a dead body, so he was unable to arrest Farmer, although documents say, he again said, “I shot a guy” but was unable to provide details about the location of the shooting or the victim, though he asked to be arrested.
As the officer was transporting Farmer to the Bishop Dudley Hospitality House, Farmer eventually identified
the first name of the victim and made reference to “Arnold’s Park,” the complex in which the shooting had taken place.
Lt. Aaron Nyberg said Monday during police briefing with media they did investigate Arnold’s Park after the comments made by Farmer, though they did not find the scene of the crime at that time. Farmer was not in police custody between the time when he made the comments and when the crime scene was identified. He also stated the three individuals were familiar with eachother, but did not explain how.
Police Chief Jon Thum said Monday that there had been no ability to arrest Farmer based solely on his comments, noting that he had heard some “pretty unique confessions” in his time as an officer that had not been true.