Christina Marie Dirks was 39, a White/Caucasian woman whose life ended in a fatal shooting in Des Moines, Iowa, on the night of May 7, 2021. Shortly after 9:20 p.m., Des Moines police were called to an apartment building at 4024 Hubbell Avenue on the city's northeast side after a shooting was reported. Officers arriving at the scene found Dirks outside the building suffering from gunshot wounds. Emergency personnel transported her to a hospital, but the injuries proved fatal.
Her killing was recorded as Des Moines' third homicide of 2021.
The investigation quickly focused on Rustin Dean Rice, a person with whom Dirks had previously shared a personal relationship. Police said the two had lived together in the Hubbell Avenue apartment, but Dirks had moved out on May 6, only a day before the shooting. What brought her back to the property the following evening was not publicly detailed in the available reporting. Investigators ultimately concluded that the shooting was intentional rather than an accident or an attack by an unknown assailant.
Witnesses at the apartment complex were able to identify the suspected shooter and told responding officers that he had gone back inside the building. With an armed homicide suspect believed to be inside, police treated the situation as an ongoing threat. Residents were evacuated while officers secured the area, and a Des Moines police tactical team was brought in rather than immediately entering the apartment. The operation continued into the early hours of May 8.
Just after midnight, tactical officers entered the apartment. Inside they found Rice dead from what authorities described as an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators reconstructed the events as Rice intentionally shooting Dirks and then returning to the apartment, where he subsequently shot himself. Police did not announce that another person had participated in the killing, and the available reporting identifies Rice as the person believed responsible for Dirks' death.
The discovery of Rice's body meant there would be no arrest or conventional criminal prosecution. He could not be taken into custody, formally prosecuted, brought to trial, or convicted because he died before police entered the apartment. Consequently, the case did not develop into a homicide trial in which prosecutors would have been required to prove the allegations against him in court. The publicly reported police conclusion instead remained that Rice intentionally killed Dirks and then died by suicide.
In the aftermath, attention shifted from the police standoff to Dirks and the family she left behind. A fundraiser organized to assist with funeral expenses described her as a loved mother, sister, and daughter and sought help for her brother and children as those close to her prepared to lay her to rest. Her recorded birth date of August 17, 1981, is consistent with her reported age at the time she was killed. What began as a late-night shooting call on Hubbell Avenue had become a homicide followed within hours by the suspected killer's suicide, leaving no surviving defendant to answer criminal charges for her death.
