A Delaware woman’s life has been cut short after being gunned down by a man who says he simply didn’t look before he pulled the trigger.
Walter Moorhead, 74, of Salisbury, Maryland, was arrested after state troopers responded around 7:40 p.m. Friday to a report of a woman shot in an open field in the town of Ellendale. She never had a chance to defend herself, explain herself, or even see it coming. Her name was Santos Maria Chilel Soto. She was 39 years old, from Georgetown, Delaware, and according to reporting from WBAL-TV, a mother of five.
According to the outlet, Friday evening, she was walking through that field with a man and two children when Moorhead opened fire. Moorhead was posted up in a camouflaged “ground blind,” believed he spotted a deer, and fired his rifle striking Chilel Soto instead. A whole family, walking in an open field, mistaken for wildlife. Troopers got to her fast and tried to save her life, but she was taken to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
It’s important to note that Delaware’s deer hunting season doesn’t kick off until November 14 under state regulations which means Moorhead may have had no business being out there with a rifle in the first place, poaching season or not.
A grown man, decades of life experience under his belt, out in a field with a loaded weapon before the season even opened, and a woman paid for it with her life.
The state isn’t playing games with this one. Moorhead has been hit with manslaughter for recklessly causing the death of another person, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and three separate counts of first-degree reckless endangering, because remember, it wasn’t just Chilel Soto out there. It was a man and two children too, all standing in the line of fire from someone who couldn’t be bothered to confirm his target before he squeezed the trigger.
Delaware State Police’s Homicide Unit has since taken over the investigation from here.