UPDATE: Minnehaha County escapee could be armed, in Rapid City area
Robert Yellow Bird was a suspect in a double homicide last year
RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - UPDATE: Yellow Bird was taken into custody by the Black Hills Fugitive Task Force, an interagency team overseen by the US Marshals Service.
He is currently in the Pennington County Jail and held without bond by the Department of Corrections on a charge of aftercare violation and for Minnehaha on an escape charge.
Yellow Bird was a suspect in the 2022 killing of two men at a North Rapid apartment complex.
After pleading not guilty to the murder charges, his case was transferred to the state Attorney General’s Office and subsequently to the juvenile justice system.
He then ended up in a West Farm Program, Changing Hands, near Sioux Falls. He walked away from that facility on Monday.
UPDATE: After a few days of searching, the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Department located Robert Yellow Bird, and he was arrested in Rapid City.
An 18-year-old man who escaped from the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office facility is possibly armed and could be in the West River area.
Robert Yellow Bird walked away from the facility with three juvenile males sometime on Monday, Sept. 25.
According to a release from the MCSO, they believe Yellow Bird is possibly armed and should be considered dangerous. He might be in a stolen black 2017 Ford F-150 with South Dakota plates 1FY720.
Yellow Bird has ties to the Rapid City area and was a suspect in two violent Rapid City crimes.
Yellow Bird, who was 17 at the time, was arrested last year in the shooting deaths of 29-year-old Joseph Standing Bear and 37-year-old Petan Milk at a North Rapid apartment. He is no longer being held on charges related to that shooting.
Before the double homicide, Yellow Bird was already being sought by the Rapid City Police Department in the shooting of another teenager on Aug. 17, 2022; as well as Minnehaha County for other violations.
Anyone with information regarding Yellow Bird’s location can call 911 to notify their local law enforcement agencies. Other information can be given to the Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Office at 605-367-7000 or CrimeStoppers at 605-367-7007.
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