In the dark, early hours of August 3, 2020, a call came in from the north side of Rapid City, South Dakota: a man was down near the intersection of Custer Street and Dilger Avenue, bleeding in the roadway. Officers arrived to find James Donner II, a 39-year-old male, suffering from gunshot wounds to the abdomen. He was rushed to the hospital, but he did not survive, and investigators quickly began treating the shooting as a homicide.
That morning, as word spread through the neighborhood,
police asked the public to help fill in the missing minutes before the shooting. Detectives focused on the window from about 1:45 a.m. to 2:30 a.m., urging anyone with doorbell cameras or nearby security systems to review footage for movement, vehicles, or anything that seemed out of place. The case was worked jointly by the Rapid City Police Department and the Pennington County Sheriff's Office, with investigators emphasizing that every lead mattered—especially in the quiet hours when most of the city was asleep.
After next-of-kin notifications were made, Donner was publicly identified in reporting about the killing, which described him as the victim found with multiple gunshot wounds during the early-morning incident in Rapid City.
Publicly available reporting and official police messaging from that period do not describe an arrest or name a suspect in connection with Donner's killing; instead, they frame it as an active investigation and continue to solicit tips and camera footage tied to the time and place of the shooting.
