SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The FBI is now investigating the shooting of a murder suspect from South Carolina by the U.S. Marshals Service in a drugstore parking lot near downtown Sioux Falls over the New Year’s weekend.
Scott Rolstad, chief deputy for the U.S. marshal’s office for South Dakota in Sioux Falls, said the name of the marshal who shot and killed the suspect Saturday afternoon will not be released, according to the federal agency’s policies. It was only the third deadly shooting in at least the past 42 years in South Dakota by the agency that pursues fugitives in violent crimes.
The man who died in Saturday’s shooting was Lonnie Haskell Powers Jr., 37, of Summerville, S.C., who was wanted for allegedly killing his uncle, James Anthony Hill, 55, at Hill’s home on Dec. 12 in nearby Ridgeville, S.C.. Powers also had been charged with holding HIll’s girlfriend hostage overnight after the shooting. The woman escaped and Powers fled.
Authorities had been looking for Powers since then, mostly in South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.
Why he was in Sioux Falls – some 1,400 miles away – is “a mystery,” Rolstad said.
“We don’t know at this time if he was just passing through or had relatives here. We just don’t know why he was here,” Rolstad said.
The shooting occurred about 1:30 p.m. on a busy shopping day at Lewis Drug, just east of downtown Sioux Falls.
The marshals, working off a tip from South Carolina authorities, tracked Powers to the parking lot.
The marshals surrounded his vehicle and negotiated with Powers for about a half-hour to try to get him to give himself up as he sat in his vehicle, Rolstad said.
Powers then took out a handgun and the marshals had to use deadly force, Rolstad said.
“He made a terrible decision,” Rolstad said.
Powers was hit in the chest with one shot. He died at the scene.
Shoppers were locked inside the store for about 45 minutes while the standoff occurred, Rolstad said.
Deadly shootings by the marshals is rare in South Dakota. The last incident was about two years ago in the Fort Thompson area in central South Dakota while during a high-speed chase of a drug suspect a relative found out about state and federal officers chasing the suspect. He met the officers on a roadway and started firing at them, Rolstad said. The relative died when shots were exchanged.
Before that, Rolstad said the last shooting involving marshals from South Dakota was about 40 years ago in 1973 in the famous Wounded Knee incident in a small town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where a U.S. marshal was shot and paralyzed in March and a Cherokee and an Oglala Lakota Indian were killed by law officers in shootings in April after a protest.
The U.S. Marshals Service is a federal agency that tracks, pursues and investigates fugitives nationwide, provides security for federal judges and courthouses and transfers prisoners.
Rolstad said the agency often partners with state, local and other federal law officers, such as in the Powers case, to find fugitives in violent and major drug crimes.
