Kyle Dahl’s relatives described the lasting cost of his death as Todd Gieck received a decades-long prison term.
WHITEHALL, Wis. — More than two years after Kyle Dahl left his family’s farm and never made it home, his wife stood in a Wisconsin courtroom describing the conversation no parent expects to have with a child. Their son was 6 when Dahl died. Now the man convicted in the shooting that killed the 36-year-old Ettrick resident has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Todd Gieck, 64, received the sentence Aug. 12 after an April jury found him guilty of first-degree reckless homicide and two firearm offenses. He also faces 20 years of extended supervision after confinement. Yet the sentencing hearing was about more than the number of years attached to those convictions. It gave Dahl’s family a formal opportunity to describe what had followed the evening of May 15, 2024: the loss of a husband and father, a son whose mother expected his regular messages, and a farmer whose life was closely tied to the Ettrick-area community.
Dahl’s widow, Brittany Dahl, told the court that the hardest task she faced after her husband’s death was explaining his absence to their son. Her statement focused not on the mechanics of the prosecution but on the permanent change inside the family. “There are no words that make that make sense,” she said after describing the questions created by a violent death. Dahl’s mother, Doris, spoke about missing the everyday messages and hugs she had received from her son. Those personal details gave the court a measure of loss that could not be expressed by the criminal counts alone.
Public memorial information described Dahl as a husband, father of two and member of a family deeply connected to farming. Born in La Crosse and raised in the Ettrick area, he married Brittany Woestman in 2016. His obituary said he farmed and helped other farmers, while also enjoying fishing, welding, hunting and Wisconsin sports. Family members remembered him as someone who knew many people in the surrounding community and readily started conversations with those he did not. He was especially happy at home, where farm life and time with his children often overlapped.
That portrait stands far from the way Dahl first entered the public record on the night he died. Deputies were dispatched shortly after 8:30 p.m. to what appeared to be a single-vehicle crash near U.S. Highway 53 and County Road TT in Trempealeau County. Dahl’s car was in a ditch after crossing the highway. He was seriously injured and taken by air to a hospital. No one at the immediate scene could tell deputies why the vehicle had suddenly left the road. What initially resembled a traffic fatality soon became something different when medical examination showed that Dahl had been shot.
Once an autopsy identified the gunshot wound as the cause of death and the case became a homicide investigation, deputies began retracing Dahl’s movements before the crash. A citizen reported seeing his car followed closely by a red sedan. Video from a business and a residence gave investigators another view of the vehicles. Those records eventually led them toward Gieck, while interviews supplied a description of the encounter that preceded Dahl’s car leaving the road. The process unfolded in stages, meaning Dahl’s relatives first faced a sudden death and then learned that investigators believed another driver’s conduct had caused it.
A passenger riding with Gieck gave investigators the account that became one of the prosecution’s key pieces of evidence. According to the criminal complaint, Dahl had driven slowly past while Gieck’s vehicle was stopped, and Gieck became increasingly agitated. After the cars encountered one another again, the passenger said he heard a firearm being readied and heard Gieck say something like “Watch this.” A shot followed, along with the sound of breaking glass. Dahl’s vehicle then left the roadway. The witness said Gieck drove away rather than returning to check on the other driver.
Investigators developed additional evidence around that account. Surveillance video showed a red sedan following Dahl and moving alongside his car. An associate told authorities that Gieck later left two firearms with him and had discussed damaging another driver’s window after becoming angry. Officers recovered the guns, and investigators found a cartridge casing near the relevant area. Prosecutors used the combined witness statements, recordings, physical evidence and circumstances to argue that Gieck’s actions were criminally reckless. Gieck, for his part, maintained that the shooting was an accident.
That disagreement remained at the center of the case through trial. Gieck pleaded not guilty and said the gun had discharged unintentionally. The distinction mattered because prosecutors charged him with first-degree reckless homicide rather than an intentional-homicide offense. The state still had to prove the elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, including reckless conduct severe enough to satisfy Wisconsin’s legal standard. After hearing the evidence during an April 2026 trial, jurors convicted Gieck of the homicide count, discharging a firearm at a vehicle and firearm possession by a felon.
The prosecution had taken nearly two years to reach that verdict. Charges were filed in June 2024, after the sheriff’s office publicly identified Dahl and investigators completed the early stages of the homicide inquiry. A $1.5 million cash bond was set. The case was later reassigned when the original judge recused himself because a member of Dahl’s family worked for the county in a role connected with the court system. Gieck entered a not-guilty plea, and the case moved through pretrial proceedings before jurors were finally selected in April 2026.
At sentencing, Gieck again told the court he had not meant to kill Dahl. He apologized to the family and described himself as frightened and rash during the encounter. Circuit Judge Thomas Clark did not accept the accident explanation as a reason to treat the conduct as minor or momentary. The judge’s focus was on the succession of choices that brought a firearm into a moving-vehicle confrontation and ended with another driver dead. The 40-year confinement term was followed by a lengthy period of court supervision, reflecting both the homicide conviction and the seriousness the court attached to the circumstances.
The case also left a record of how quickly the public identity of a victim can become narrowed to the final minutes of a life. Court documents necessarily concentrated on Dahl’s vehicle, his route, the wound that killed him and the evidence collected afterward. His family’s memorial accounts described everything outside that frame: the farm work, the children, the relatives, the dog that accompanied him, the sports he watched and the small routines that continued until the day he died. A celebration of life was held at the Ettrick Rod and Gun Club on May 25, 2024, while the homicide investigation was still developing.
By the time of Gieck’s sentencing in August 2026, the criminal justice system had answered its principal questions about responsibility. Jurors had returned guilty verdicts, and the judge had imposed a prison term. Those rulings cannot restore the routines Dahl’s relatives described. His widow’s account made that distinction clear: the legal process could decide what happened and what punishment followed, while his family remained responsible for explaining an absence that began one evening on a Wisconsin highway.
For Dahl’s children and other relatives, the sentencing date marked a legal milestone rather than an end to the effects of his death. Gieck’s punishment can be measured in years of confinement and supervision; the family’s loss cannot. Their statements during the case returned attention to the ordinary parts of Dahl’s life — raising children, farming and staying close to relatives — that disappeared from view when his name first became associated with a homicide investigation.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.