A family’s walk through a Delaware field ended with a mother of five dying from a hunter’s bullet after a Maryland man allegedly took aim at what he thought was a deer.
Santos Maria Chilel Soto, 39, was out with her boyfriend, Miniveldo, and two children Friday evening in Ellendale when the shot hit around 7:40 p.m., Delaware State Police said.
“All of a sudden I heard an explosion. She had covered her ears and she fell,” Miniveldo said through a translator.
Walter Moorhead, 74, was inside a ground blind while deer hunting nearby, police said. From that camouflaged hiding spot, he allegedly mistook Soto for game and fired his rifle.
The bullet hit Soto as her family watched the walk turn into a frantic emergency.
Troopers tried to save her at the scene before she was rushed to a local hospital. Soto died there.
After the shot, Soto’s daughter ran from the house and reached her mother on the ground.
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“When I got there she was on the ground and she wasn’t like responding or anything,” the girl said.
Moorhead now faces felony charges, including manslaughter recklessly causing the death of another person, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and three counts of first-degree reckless endangerment.
Miniveldo demanded answers from Moorhead after the shooting, according to a translator.
“Once he got there he told him, ‘Why did he do that? Is he a psychopath? Is he racist?’ He was just asking for a reason,” the translator said.
Miniveldo said Moorhead tried to leave after Soto was shot, but stopped when he was told police were coming and that Miniveldo would not let him go.
Moorhead later left custody after posting a $43,000 cash bond.
The release added another shock for Soto’s grieving family as they began planning her funeral.
“I don’t know if it was on purpose or anything, but it doesn’t seem right how he already got out,” Soto’s daughter said.
Police are still looking into whether Moorhead had permission to be hunting on the property and whether hunting was allowed there at that hour.
A GoFundMe page remembered Soto as a mother of five and a “beloved” aunt.
“Maria’s family is now facing the overwhelming pain of this sudden loss while also trying to make sure she is laid to rest with dignity,” the fundraiser reads. “This heartbreaking situation has placed a heavy financial burden on the family at a time when they are grieving deeply.”
The money is meant to cover funeral services and the cost of sending Soto’s body to Guatemala. By Monday evening, the page had brought in roughly $12,000.
Soto’s death was one of several hunting-linked shootings in recent months where guns, outdoor outings or long-running hunting relationships ended with criminal cases or fatal injuries.
In November 2025, prosecutors accused 75-year-old Brent Hofman of walking into 67-year-old Ricky Roundy’s home with a pistol after drinking, then sitting with Roundy and another hunting friend in a detached garage.
A criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime identified the surviving friend as “Victim #2.”
That man told investigators that he and Roundy had known Hofman for more than a decade through deer hunting. He called Hofman “a bit weird” and a “hermit,” but said there had “never been any issues with him” before the shooting.
The three men had cocktails and talked about deer hunting before Hofman allegedly picked up a handgun from behind the bar and delivered a warning.
“I hope you’ll excuse me if I have to kill you guys,” Hofman allegedly said.
The surviving hunter told authorities Hofman opened fire “for no reason,” killing Roundy.
He escaped the garage, locked himself inside another building on the property, grabbed a rifle and called 911.
He warned the dispatcher that if Hofman came to a nearby window, “he is f–king dead.”
Hofman followed, the complaint said, and the surviving man shot through a glass door. The glass broke and cut Hofman’s face, leaving serious injuries.
When first responders took Hofman into custody, he asked why they had shot him. Deputies told him they had not, and Hofman reportedly answered “thank you” and “I love you.”
In March, a northern Indiana raccoon hunt killed 31-year-old Andrew Boots after a bullet bounced off a tree instead of hitting the animal.
Boots, of North Judson, was in woods near County Road 500 West, just south of State Road 110, when another hunter fired at a raccoon climbing a tree, DNR officials said.
The round ricocheted and hit Boots in the stomach.
EMS crews were sent to the woods shortly before 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday and found Boots with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
He was taken to South Bend Memorial Hospital, where he later died.
A Northern California turkey hunt also ended in an arrest after an 80-year-old man allegedly fired into brush without knowing what was in front of him.
John Lee was at the Fremont Weir Wildlife Area on a Sunday morning when he fired his shotgun while trying to shoot a turkey, the Sutter County Sheriff’s Office said.
A shotgun shell from Lee’s gun hit 65-year-old Shawn Parrish once in the back of the head.
Parrish died at the scene.
Authorities said Lee and Parrish had been hunting separately.
Lee was arrested on charges of second-degree murder and negligent discharge of a firearm, according to the sheriff’s office.
