Todd Gieck maintained the gun fired accidentally, but jurors convicted him after hearing evidence about the moments before Kyle Dahl was shot.
WHITEHALL, Wis. — Todd Gieck told a Wisconsin court that the gunshot that killed Kyle Dahl was an accident. A passenger who was beside him that night described a different sequence: growing agitation over another driver’s slow movement, the sound of a gun being readied, a brief remark and then a shot. A jury ultimately convicted Gieck, and he has now been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The contrast between those accounts defined the criminal case. Gieck did not dispute that he had been armed or that a shot had been fired during the May 15, 2024, encounter in Trempealeau County. His position was that the weapon discharged unintentionally as he handled it. Prosecutors argued that the surrounding conduct showed the extreme recklessness required for first-degree reckless homicide. Their evidence went beyond the instant of discharge, asking jurors to consider how Gieck behaved before the shot, what he allegedly said, how the vehicles moved and what he did afterward.
The passenger’s statement provided prosecutors with a narrative of the minutes that could not be seen from the final crash scene. According to the criminal complaint, Gieck and the passenger had been traveling in a red sedan when they stopped near the roadway. Dahl passed them slowly. The passenger said Gieck was already agitated and became more upset after seeing Dahl’s car. Gieck later passed Dahl, and the vehicles encountered each other again. As Gieck caught up, the passenger said he heard the firearm being readied and heard Gieck say something like “Watch this.”
The next sounds, according to the witness, were a gunshot and breaking glass. Dahl’s car then left the roadway. The passenger’s version did not depend on an interpretation formed weeks later from a distant observation; he said he was inside Gieck’s car when the shot was fired. At the same time, his statement remained evidence to be tested like any other witness account. Investigators sought independent facts that could either support or undermine it, and surveillance recordings became particularly important because they documented the movement of the two cars around the time Dahl was shot.
Video from a business and a home showed a red sedan following Dahl’s vehicle and moving alongside it, according to local reports about the prosecution. That evidence did not supply audio of every statement attributed to Gieck, but it gave investigators a separate record of the traffic pattern described by witnesses. A resident familiar with Gieck also helped identify the sedan. The recordings mattered because when deputies first reached Dahl, none of the people gathered at the roadside had seen the confrontation. Without the later video and interviews, investigators initially had what looked like only the aftermath of a crash.
Dahl’s sedan had crossed the centerline of U.S. Highway 53 and ended in a ditch near County Road TT. He was found with a severe head injury and was flown to a hospital. Medical personnel later determined that he had been shot, and an autopsy identified the gunshot wound as the cause of death. That medical finding opened the homicide investigation that eventually produced the passenger interview. It also established a fact central to both sides at trial: whatever Gieck’s intent at the instant the firearm discharged, the shot caused Dahl’s death.
Other evidence concerned what happened after the encounter. An associate of Gieck told investigators that Gieck had spoken about damaging someone’s back window because the person had angered him and later left two firearms at the associate’s home. Authorities recovered the guns. A police dog also helped locate a cartridge casing in gravel in an area connected to the investigation. Publicly available records did not establish that the casing alone conclusively identified the fatal weapon through a disclosed laboratory match, making it one part of a larger circumstantial and testimonial case rather than a substitute for the rest of the evidence.
Gieck’s own explanation developed along a separate track. He pleaded not guilty after prosecutors filed charges and maintained that the shooting was accidental. A complaint referenced a jail call in which he described an accidental discharge and acknowledged circumstances surrounding his handling of the firearm. At his August 2026 sentencing, he again said he had not meant to kill Dahl, telling the court he became scared and acted rashly. That position required the judge and, earlier, the jury to distinguish a claim about subjective intent from the broader legal question of reckless conduct.
That distinction is central to understanding the verdict. Gieck was convicted of first-degree reckless homicide, not intentional homicide. The state therefore did not need a jury finding that he formed a specific intent to kill Dahl. Prosecutors instead had to prove the elements of the reckless-homicide charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The passenger’s description, the surveillance recordings and the surrounding evidence were relevant because they allowed jurors to assess whether the shooting could fairly be viewed as an isolated mishandling of a gun or as the culmination of a dangerous course of conduct.
After a trial in April 2026, jurors chose the latter view under the law. They convicted Gieck of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon, discharging a firearm at another vehicle and possessing a firearm as a felon. The verdicts came nearly two years after Dahl’s death and after Gieck had continued to challenge the prosecution’s account. Because a criminal conviction required proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury’s decision marked the point when the state’s allegations became adjudicated findings for purposes of the trial court.
The case then shifted from competing accounts to sentencing. Dahl’s relatives told the court about consequences that did not depend on whether the gun fired by intent or through reckless handling. His widow, Brittany Dahl, described having to tell their young son that his father would not return home. His mother described the loss of a son who had stayed in frequent contact with her. Dahl, 36, was a farmer and father of two whose family described him as deeply rooted in the Ettrick community.
Gieck apologized to the family during that hearing while continuing to call the shooting an accident. Circuit Judge Thomas Clark made clear that the explanation did not erase the conduct surrounding the discharge. Sentencing judges may consider the nature of the offense, the defendant’s conduct and the harm caused, among other lawful factors. Clark imposed 40 years of confinement, while the lesser firearm sentences were reported as concurrent. Gieck is also to serve 20 years of extended supervision following the prison term.
The verdict and sentence leave an important boundary between what the case established and what it did not. The jury convicted Gieck of reckless homicide, so the judgment should not be rewritten as a finding that he committed intentional murder. At the same time, his continuing assertion that the weapon fired accidentally did not prevent the jury from finding him criminally responsible for Dahl’s death. The law allowed both issues to be considered separately: whether Gieck specifically intended the fatal result and whether his conduct nevertheless met the high threshold for first-degree reckless homicide.
For investigators, that conclusion rested on reconstructing conduct that happened before the car reached the ditch. For the jury, it meant weighing Gieck’s explanation against a passenger’s account, surveillance video and the other evidence developed during the inquiry. For Dahl’s family, the distinction between accident and recklessness did not change the final consequence described in court: a husband and father left home on May 15, 2024, and did not return.
Gieck is serving the sentence imposed by the Trempealeau County Circuit Court. The 40-year confinement term, followed by 20 years of extended supervision, stands as the legal consequence of the jury’s reckless-homicide verdict after the accident defense failed to persuade jurors or the sentencing judge.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.