Cody Allen Schmidt, a 30-year-old White man, was killed on August 2, 2020, in the area west of Sioux Falls near Wall Lake in Minnehaha County, South Dakota. The next morning, a landowner out checking cattle discovered his body lying in a roadside ditch near the rural crossroads of 266th Street and 464th Avenue, roughly a mile east of Wall Lake and several miles west of the city.
Investigators said he had suffered gunshot wounds, and the death was treated as a homicide as an autopsy was arranged and detectives tried to retrace his movements in the days leading up to the shooting.
In the earliest public updates, authorities released few specifics beyond how he was found and where, and they appealed for anyone who had seen Schmidt or knew where he had been to come forward. The scene itself hinted at violence that had started elsewhere: reports described a neighbor hearing gunshots the night before the body was found, and by daylight Schmidt had been left in the ditch, out on open farm country where a passerby might never notice.
Within days, the case shifted from an unsolved roadside killing to an investigation with named suspects. Two Sioux Falls men—Luis Antonio Rodriguez and Adam Christopher Sorbel—were arrested in connection with Schmidt's death. Reports said one was taken into custody after being located on an outstanding warrant, and the other was arrested the next day as the sheriff's office continued building the case. Authorities indicated the victim and the suspects knew each other, and they cautioned that the investigation was still active and could lead to additional arrests.
Rodriguez and Sorbel were publicly described as facing severe charges tied not only to the shooting but also to an alleged abduction. Accounts of the charging paperwork said the men were accused of murder—reported in some places as first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder—and kidnapping, along with a firearm-related felony count connected to the underlying crime. Other reporting characterized the case as involving a kidnapping that ended with Schmidt being killed and left in the ditch near Wall Lake.
