Man pleads guilty in South Dakota shooting death

March 5, 2021

RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – A man accused in a fatal shooting near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation boundaries has pleaded guilty to murder charges.

Thirty-eight-year-old Phillip Pond entered the plea Wednesday in federal court in Rapid City to second-degree murder and using a gun during a violent crime.

Pond is accused of shooting 40-year-old Justin Little Hawk in Pine Ridge on Nov. 22, 2020 after the two argued.

Little Hawk died the following month at a hospital in Colorado.

Pond recently turned himself in at a police station in Chadron, Nebraska.