Donald D. Lewis, a 38-year-old man, was killed on the evening of October 9, 2025, at the Dutch Mill Mobile Home Park on Madison’s east side. At approximately 7:58 p.m., Madison police were dispatched to the 4700 block of Dutch Mill Road after receiving reports of a verbal disturbance and gunfire. When officers arrived, they found Lewis down and suffering from what appeared to be a gunshot wound.
Despite the emergency response, he died at the scene, and police immediately began treating the incident as a homicide.
In the days that followed, investigators worked to determine what had happened during the confrontation. Police publicly asked anyone who had witnessed the disturbance, knew something about the shooting, or had surveillance or other camera footage from the area to contact detectives. Early reports did not explain what the argument had been about, what relationship may have existed between Lewis and anyone involved in the disturbance, or what circumstances led to the gunfire. On October 14, the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office publicly identified the victim as Donald D. Lewis. At that point, officials said the cause of death had not yet been formally determined and that additional testing was underway, although police had reported finding him with a gunshot wound and were investigating his death as a homicide.
The investigation produced a significant development nearly two weeks after the killing. On October 22, Madison police publicly identified Fred L. Rushing Jr. as a suspect in Lewis’s homicide. Police released photographs of Rushing and announced that detectives were actively trying to locate him. Authorities urged anyone who knew where Rushing could be found, or who had additional information about the homicide, to contact the Madison Police Department. Anonymous information could also be submitted through Madison Area Crime Stoppers, with police noting that information leading to an arrest could qualify for a reward.
Police did not publicly describe the evidence that caused investigators to identify Rushing as the suspect, nor did the available reports disclose whether investigators believed the confrontation was planned or arose from the verbal dispute reported immediately before the shooting. No detailed account of the alleged interaction between Lewis and Rushing was released in the available reporting, and authorities did not publicly identify a motive.
The publicly available Madison Police Department incident record continues to identify Rushing as the suspect and states that police were seeking to locate him. The official case page does not contain a subsequent update announcing that he was arrested, and the online sources located for the case do not document criminal charges, a court appearance, trial, plea, or conviction connected to Lewis’s death. As a result, the documented public status of the investigation leaves Rushing identified as a suspect who was being sought by authorities, rather than as a person who had been convicted of the homicide.
