On the evening of July 1, 2023, 34-year-old Steven Michael Hill was found suffering from a gunshot wound on a sidewalk at Northeast Silverton Road and 17th Street in Salem, near the Oregon State Fairgrounds. Bystanders and police officers provided aid, but paramedics pronounced Hill dead at the scene. The Salem Police Department’s Violent Crimes Unit treated the case as a homicide and processed the scene.

Investigators traced the shooting to 19-year-old Michael Ray Solis after a July 4 fight at the St. Paul Rodeo, when a gun fell from Solis’s pants and was recovered by police. Ballistic testing matched that firearm to the weapon used in Hill’s killing. Detectives reported the two men did not know each other and described the incident as gang-related, linking Solis to the 18th Street gang and Hill to a rival Native American gang.

More than two weeks after the shooting, Salem police arrested Solis and he was indicted by a Marion County grand jury on second-degree murder and weapons charges. If anyone knew Hill or has information about his activities that evening, please come forward.