Jonathan Puttmann, 39, was killed on November 15, 2016, in Dell Rapids, South Dakota. He was a white male. That Tuesday night began with a family moment—children being dropped off—set against an ordinary neighborhood street that would soon fill with emergency lights and stunned neighbors.
According to investigators, deputies and troopers rushed in after a call about a shooting and found Puttmann lying in the street with a gunshot wound to the head; he was taken to a local hospital,
where he was pronounced dead. Authorities said the confrontation grew out of an argument involving Puttmann, his estranged wife, and her boyfriend, with the tension spilling out of words and into a physical altercation on the roadway.
In the first hours of the investigation, deputies identified the shooter as Alex Wittenberg of Dell Rapids. Law enforcement said Wittenberg used a handgun during the altercation and shot Puttmann in the head, and Wittenberg was jailed as the case moved quickly into the criminal courts.
As the case headed toward trial, prosecutors framed the shooting as a deadly overreaction to a fistfight, arguing that no one should die simply for throwing punches. The defense told a different story, saying Wittenberg acted in self-defense, pointing to the claim that Puttmann would not stop trying to hit him and that Wittenberg had been threatened the night before. Accounts of the moments before the shot centered on a vehicle parked across from Puttmann's home to drop off his children; authorities said Puttmann approached, a fight erupted, and Wittenberg pulled a gun from his waistband.
The trial culminated in an acquittal. On January 31, 2018, a jury found Wittenberg not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with Puttmann's death, after deliberating for nearly ten hours. With that verdict, there were no convictions or further criminal penalties in the homicide case, leaving Dell Rapids with a death that had been argued as either a criminal killing or a tragic, legally justified act of self-preservation—decided in court, but still haunting in the way it began, with children waiting to go inside a home and an argument that would not let go.
