Todd Gieck was convicted after investigators determined a seemingly routine roadside crash was actually the scene of a fatal shooting.

WHITEHALL, Wis. — A Wisconsin man convicted of killing another driver during a confrontation on a rural highway was sentenced to 40 years in prison, closing the trial phase of a case that began more than two years earlier as what authorities initially believed was a single-vehicle crash. Todd Gieck, 64, was also ordered to serve 20 years of extended supervision after his confinement for the May 2024 death of 36-year-old Kyle Dahl of Ettrick.

The sentence followed an April jury verdict finding Gieck guilty of first-degree reckless homicide with use of a dangerous weapon, discharging a firearm at a vehicle and possessing a firearm as a felon. The two firearm sentences are to run at the same time as the homicide sentence, according to local reporting on the court proceeding. The homicide conviction did not require the jury to find that Gieck intended to commit murder. Under Wisconsin law, first-degree reckless homicide centers on causing a death through criminally reckless conduct under circumstances showing utter disregard for human life. Circuit Judge Thomas Clark focused on that recklessness when imposing the lengthy prison term.

Clark rejected Gieck’s continued claim that the gun discharged accidentally as the two vehicles traveled near U.S. Highway 53 and County Road TT in Trempealeau County. Gieck apologized to Dahl’s family at sentencing and said he had acted rashly after becoming frightened. The judge instead emphasized the chain of decisions that put an armed Gieck alongside Dahl’s vehicle on the highway. “Your actions were reckless to the extreme degree,” Clark told him. The sentence came after prosecutors, investigators and jurors spent nearly two years reconstructing how an ordinary evening drive turned into a homicide.

The case began at about 8:32 p.m. May 15, 2024, when a sheriff’s deputy was sent to a report of a one-car crash near Highway 53 and County Road TT in the Town of Gale. Dahl’s sedan had crossed the centerline and entered the opposite ditch, continuing for roughly 45 yards before hitting a field road and culvert embankment, according to the criminal complaint summarized in local reporting. Emergency responders found Dahl seriously injured inside. He was flown to a hospital, where he died. With no eyewitnesses gathered at the crash site able to explain what had happened, the first visible clues pointed toward a traffic accident.

That explanation changed after medical personnel and an autopsy established that Dahl had suffered a gunshot wound and that the wound caused his death. The death was classified as a homicide, transforming the investigation. Authorities began seeking vehicles and people that had been near Dahl shortly before his car left the road. A citizen reported seeing Dahl’s vehicle being followed closely by a red car. Investigators then collected surveillance video from a business and a residence. The recordings showed a red sedan in the area and became part of the evidence used to focus the inquiry on Gieck.

The most important account came from a passenger who told investigators he had been riding with Gieck. According to the criminal complaint, the passenger described Gieck as agitated after Dahl drove slowly past. The two vehicles later encountered each other again. The witness said he heard the sound of a gun being readied and heard Gieck say something like “Watch this” before hearing a gunshot and breaking glass. The passenger said Dahl’s vehicle then went off the road. His account became particularly significant because it described events investigators could compare with the physical evidence and surveillance footage gathered after Dahl’s death.

Investigators also traced firearms that Gieck had left with an associate several days after the shooting, according to the complaint. That associate told authorities Gieck had spoken about damaging someone’s rear window after becoming angry and had asked him to hold two guns temporarily. Officers recovered firearms, and a law-enforcement dog later located a cartridge casing near the area connected to the encounter. Public reporting on the case did not establish that every element of the state’s investigation resulted in a publicly disclosed laboratory match, but the collection of witness testimony, video, physical evidence and Gieck’s own statements formed the prosecution’s case.

Gieck maintained that the shooting was not intentional. He pleaded not guilty after charges were filed in June 2024 and continued to describe the discharge as accidental through the criminal proceedings. His defense was therefore not that Dahl had survived or that no gunshot occurred, but that the fatal shot was not deliberately fired at him. Jurors heard the competing account during a trial that began in late April 2026. On April 29, they returned guilty verdicts on all three counts, accepting the state’s case that Gieck’s conduct met the legal standard for first-degree reckless homicide and the related firearm offenses.

The sentencing hearing shifted the proceeding from determining criminal responsibility to measuring punishment and the harm caused by Dahl’s death. Dahl’s widow, Brittany Dahl, described having to tell their young son that his father would not return home. Dahl’s mother also spoke about the daily contact she had lost, recalling the messages and affection her son regularly shared with his family. The statements placed the legal arguments over recklessness, firearms and sentencing terms alongside the continuing consequences for a family that had initially been told only that Dahl had been found after a vehicle left the highway.

Dahl’s family and public obituary described him as a lifelong member of the Ettrick area who worked in farming and helped other farmers in the community. He was married and had two children. Outside work, his family said, he enjoyed fishing, welding, hunting and following Wisconsin sports, while much of his time centered on his children and the farm. A celebration of his life was held in Ettrick in May 2024, before authorities publicly announced the charges that would eventually bring Gieck before a jury.

The investigation also moved through several procedural stages before trial. Gieck was initially held while authorities completed their work, and prosecutors later filed charges including first-degree reckless homicide. A judge set a $1.5 million cash bond. Trempealeau County Judge Rian Radtke then recused himself because a member of Dahl’s family worked for the county in a position connected with the court system. Clark was assigned to the case and ultimately presided over the trial and sentencing. Gieck entered a not-guilty plea in August 2024, and the case remained pending until the 2026 jury trial.

By sentencing day, the central factual dispute was no longer whether Gieck’s conduct was criminal. The jury’s verdict had settled that question for the trial court. What remained was Gieck’s argument that the shooting itself was an unintended discharge and his request for the court to consider his explanation in determining punishment. Clark declined to treat that account as enough to substantially reduce the consequences of the conduct the jury had found. The resulting 40-year confinement term means the most serious punishment arises from the reckless-homicide conviction, with the additional firearm sentences running concurrently.

More than two years after deputies first found Dahl’s car off the highway, the case has moved from an unexplained roadside death to a completed trial and sentencing. The jury’s verdict and the 40-year prison term established the criminal consequences for Gieck’s conduct, but they do not alter the loss described by Dahl’s relatives in court. For his family, the legal proceeding closes one chapter of a case that began with unanswered questions on a rural Trempealeau County road.

Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.