CANDLER, N.C. – This past April, 4-year-old Trenton Michael Scott was found dead in the trailer he shared with his mother and his mother’s live-in friend. The little boy had been beaten to death. Now reports are that at the time of his death, he was legally drunk.
Heather Bensen, 29, called 911 shortly after 6 a.m. to report that when she checked on her son before leaving for work, she found him dead.
“Oh my God!” the sobbing woman told a dispatcher. “He looks like he’s been beaten to death.”
An autopsy revealed Trent had a blood alcohol level of 0.12 percent (well above the 0.08 legal driving limit), and died from a lacerated liver.
He also suffered blunt force trauma to his abdomen and chest, ligature strangulation on his neck, eight broken ribs, a fractured skull, broken teeth, bit marks on his back and chest and numerous cuts and bruises all over his body.
Police would arrest 24-year-old William Godfrey Hedden and charge him with first-degree murder. Aside from his mother, Hedden was the only other person in the trailer with Trent that night.
Heather claims that Hedden was down on his luck and she had allowed him to sleep on the couch ever since she and Trent’s father had split. Other reports describe him as her boyfriend. She says on the night of Trenton’s death, she was sleeping at one end of the trailer with a fan on to drown out noise while her son had his own room at the other.
During a search of Hedden’s trailer, investigators seized four pages of child erotica, a box cutter, a handwritten note, notebooks and phones.
Detectives also confiscated bed sheets, a syringe, beer and liquor bottles, a glass pipe, a plastic bag with marijuana residue and prescription pill bottles.
Hedden is being held without bond in the Buncombe County Jail. District Attorney Ron Moore has said he will be seeking the death penalty.
Tags: Beating, Child Abuse, Crime, Murder, North Carolina, Trenton Michael Scott, William Godfrey Hedden
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