IHEA: target misidentification among top factors in fatal hunting incidents

Walter Moorhead, 74, of Salisbury, Maryland, has been jailed on suspicion of manslaughter after he allegedly fatally shot a woman he mistook for a deer while hunting in Delaware, state police said.

The shooting occurred at about 7:40 p.m. Friday in a field near Ellendale, Delaware, where Moorhead had been hunting from a ground blind, according to the Delaware State Police.

State police said Moorhead believed he saw a deer and fired his rifle; the person in his line of fire was actually a woman — identified as 39-year-old Santos Maria Chilel Soto of Georgetown, Delaware — walking across the field with two children.

Soto was pronounced dead at an area hospital after troopers who responded to a report of the shooting provided first aid and transported her for emergency treatment, the agency said.

Investigators determined that Moorhead had fired the shot that struck Soto and took him into custody, state police said. The agency booked Moorhead — described as a Salisbury, Maryland, resident — with manslaughter, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and reckless endangering.

Delaware law defines manslaughter as recklessness causing the death of another person, according to the police statement. The state classifies manslaughter and firearm-possession offenses as class B felonies that can carry up to 25 years in prison.

Moorhead posted a $43,000 bond to secure his release from custody pending the outcome of the case, state police said. Attempts to reach Moorhead for comment at telephone numbers associated with him were not immediately successful.

Fatal accidental shootings in the context of hunting are relatively rare in the United States, according to a database curated by the International Hunter Education Association.

The IHEA hunting-incident database lists 252 fatal firearm-discharge incidents between 2010 and 2025 — an annual average of 16.8 — comprising 10.5% of 2,404 confirmed incidents recorded over the same period.

Failure to properly identify a target was among the most commonly cited contributing factors in those incidents, according to the IHEA data.