Mission man and Mellette County woman sentenced in burglary and homicide case

PIERRE, S.D. (KOTA) - A Mellette County woman was sentenced May 8 in federal court to 20 years in prison for shooting and killing another woman last year. Looking Cloud pleaded guilty on Jan. 18 to second-degree murder.

According to the Department of Justice, 21-year-old Sativa Looking Cloud got into a fight at a Mellette County home on Feb. 17, 2022, pulled out a gun, and shot the other woman once in the chest, killing her.

The shooting was the second incident in two days involving Looking Cloud.

The day before, Looking Cloud and 30-year-old Stephen Fallis of Mission were in another Mellette County home when they got into a fight with several people who lived there. Looking Cloud, the DOJ says, fired several shots but no one was injured.

On the morning of Feb. 17, law enforcement officers searched Fallis’s Tood County home, seizing several guns, including two with obliterated serial numbers.

Looking Cloud was arrested on Feb. 18, 2022. It took law enforcement a little more than a year to find Fallis. He was arrested on March 1, 2023, at a home in Vermillion.

Fallis pleaded guilty to possession of a stolen firearm and prohibited persons in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.