Late on the morning of August 31, 2016, Woonsocket police responded to a call at a South 3rd Avenue residence and found 26-year-old Jennifer Ann Gibson had been killed in the early hours of that day. Investigators determined she died from a fatal stab wound to the neck. The house where the incident occurred belonged to her mother and was the shared home of Gibson, Matthew Walter Novak, and their four children.

The disturbance prompted a brief standoff. A SWAT team and investigators from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation, plus officers from Sanborn and Jerauld counties, secured a block-wide area; nearby Woonsocket High School briefly went into lockdown. Novak, 33, was taken into custody at the scene and initially charged with second-degree murder. A Sanborn County Grand Jury later indicted him on alternate counts including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and two counts of first-degree manslaughter; he pleaded not guilty and was held on bond. Earlier in 2016 Novak and Gibson had been noted locally as the parents of the first baby born that year at Huron Regional Medical Center, and Gibson’s obituary recorded she was engaged to be married the month after her death.

Are there readers who knew Jennifer, her family, or who have information about the case?