March 17 (UPI) -- An active duty airman has been arrested and charged with the death of a 21-year-old woman who has been missing since August, South Dakota authorities said.
The airman, Quinterius Chappelle, 24, was arrested on federal charges of second-degree murder for killing Sahela Sangrait, the Pennington County Sheriff's Office said in a statement on Facebook on Saturday.
Sangrait -- a resident of Box Elder, a western South Dakota city of some 13,800 people located in Pennington and Meade counties -- was reported missing Aug. 10.
On March 4, a hiker found what authorities described as "a badly decomposed body" near the Pennington-Custer County line.
Authorities announced on Wednesday that the body belonged to Sangrait.
According to jail records, Chappelle was booked into the Pennington County Jail on Friday at 11:41 p.m. local time.
Little information about the arrest and the alleged crime has been made public and it was not immediately clear what the relationship between Chappelle and Sangrait was.
The Pennington County Sheriff's Office said authorities have determined that Sangrait was killed on the Ellsworth Air Force Base, located in Box Elder, where Chappelle was stationed.
The U.S. Attorney General's Office for South Dakota is prosecuting the case.
