A Maryland hunter was recently jailed on suspicion of manslaughter after he allegedly fatally shot a woman whom he mistook for a deer, according to authorities in Delaware.
Walter Moorhead, 74, was hunting from a ground blind in a field near Ellendale, Delaware, at about 7.40pm on Friday when he believed he saw a deer and fired his rifle, state police said in a statement. Yet it was actually a woman whom Moorhead fired at and struck as she walked across the field with two children, the statement added.
State police troopers who responded to a report of the woman being shot provided first aid to her. The woman – identified as 39-year-old Georgetown, Delaware, resident Santos Maria Chilel Soto – was then brought to an area hospital for emergency treatment but was pronounced dead there, according to state police.
Troopers investigating the case spoke with Moorhead, determined he had fired the shot that struck Soto and took him into custody, state police added. The agency said troopers booked the Salisbury, Maryland, resident with manslaughter, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and reckless endangering.
Delaware law defines manslaughter as recklessness causing the death of another person. The state considers manslaughter and possession of a firearm to be class B felonies which can carry up to 25 years in prison.
Moorhead posted a $43,000 bond to secure a release from custody pending the outcome of the case, Delaware state police said.
Attempts to contact Moorhead for comment at telephone numbers associated with him weren’t immediately successful.
Fatal accidental shootings in the context of hunting are relatively rare, according to a database curated by the International Hunter Education Association (IHEA). The IHEA hunting incident database lists 252 fatal firearm-discharge incidents between 2010 and 2025 (an average of 16.8 annually).
Failure to properly identify a target was among the most common cited factors for those types of incidents, according to the IHEA database.
