In the early hours of January 12, 2018, Seth James Murray was found fatally shot inside a home in Watertown, South Dakota. He was a 30-year-old White man. Authorities said the call came in around the middle of the night, and investigators quickly focused on what had happened inside the residence rather than on an unknown intruder or a fleeing suspect.
Police identified another person at the scene, Donald Herron of Watertown, and alleged that Murray's death stemmed from a handgun being handled inside the home. According to reporting that day, investigators believed Herron had been “playing with a handgun” at about 3:30 a.m. when it discharged, striking Murray in the head. Murray died from the gunshot wound.
An arrest followed immediately. Herron was taken into custody and charged with manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm, and officials reported he was held on a $100,000 bond. With Herron in custody so quickly, the case moved less like a search for a shadowy offender and more like the grim accounting of a moment that prosecutors believed never should have happened.
As Murray's family and community prepared to say goodbye, public notices recorded the bare facts of his passing in Watertown on January 12, 2018, and noted his birth date as November 15, 1987. The funeral-home obituary placed him in Watertown at the time of his death, marking the loss in the ordinary language of visitation hours and services—details that contrasted sharply with the violence described in the criminal case.
Later updates indicated the prosecution ended with Herron pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and that he was sentenced in connection with Murray's shooting death. No other suspects were identified in the publicly available reporting describing the incident and the resulting case against Herron.
