Michael Wills has his game face on; Arrested in toddler's death

[Dakota Valkyrie]

I would like to shake the hand of whoever gave him that face job.
Hopefully Bubba will continue the beautification project.

A Lincoln man was arrested Friday morning in connection with the death of a toddler.
[...]

Michael Wills, 23, was living at the home with the boy and his mother at the time of the incident. He was taken into custody Friday morning and faces a charge of felony child abuse resulting in death.

http://www.ketv.com/news/23712862/detail.html

Prosecutors now say, in juvenile court records, that 22-month-old Carter Vetter died March 2 as the result of injuries from blunt force trauma and that the boy had unexplained bruises in December.

In a petition filed this week, Chief Deputy County Attorney Alicia Henderson sought continued state custody of Carter's 5-year-old sister, who lived with him and their mother, Katrina Saltzman, before he died.

In the petition, Henderson said that in December Carter had the kind of bruising not common for a child of his age "in the absence of trauma."

It wasn't clear from the petition who knew about the bruising in December or when officials learned about the bruises.

Henderson said Saltzman had no adequate explanation for the bruising and took no steps to protect the boy from further bruising.
[...]

As a result, his 5-year-old sister, Andrea, was taken into protective custody and placed with the Department of Health and Human Services.

In an affidavit in support of the move, Lincoln Police Investigator Michael Barry said medical evidence showed Carter died from nonaccidental trauma, the cause of which had not been explained by Saltzman or her two roommates.

He also alleged Saltzman had been using illegal drugs in the home.

At a hearing this week in juvenile court, Saltzman did not object to her daughter's legal custody remaining out of her home with HHS.

http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...cc4c03286.html

[Hellsbells]

I would like to shake the hand of whoever gave him that face job.

Looks to me like he resisted the police when he was arrested. You cant protect you face when your hands are cuffed behind your back, just a guess . he has a nice knot on his head too.

[Jerri Blank]

25-year-old on trial for toddler's death

In opening statements late Monday, the prosecutor told the jury the case they would hear was all about 23-month-old Carter Vetter.

His too-short life and his untimely death, Deputy County Attorney Holly Parsley said.

It will be about Micheal Wills, too, the man at the defense table who is accused of child abuse resulting in the toddler's death.

Wills had been watching Carter the night he died, while Wills' wife, Olivia, and Carter's mother, Katrina Saltzman, ran errands. They were gone for about 30 minutes from the house they all shared, along with Carter's sister and the Wills' two children.

At 9:45 p.m. March 2, rescue workers responded to a call from their home at 3601 Lewis Ave. and found Carter unresponsive.

He was pronounced dead at a Lincoln hospital less than an hour later.

In court Monday, attorneys on both sides called the little boy's death a tragedy, while at the same time drawing battle lines in a case that could come down to the testimony of disagreeing doctors.

Three for the state. Two for the defense.

Parsley said one of her experts, a pediatrician, will say that it's her medical opinion that the kind of injuries Carter suffered could not have happened the way that Wills told police they did -- as the result of a tantrum in which Carter threw his head back and thunked it on the floor.

She asked the jury to pay attention to his bruises, seen in pictures taken in the days and weeks before he died.

Carter had been full of life that day, running around and playing, Parsley said, but that night he lay lifeless, the result of a traumatic brain injury.

Wills' attorney, Shawn Elliott of the Lancaster County Public Defender's Office, argued there was insufficient medical evidence in the case.

"A perfectly innocent explanation is just as likely to be the cause of this child's death," he said.

Elliott said the bottom line was in the time Carter and his mother lived with the Wills family -- between Nov. 1, 2009, and his death March 2, 2010 -- Carter was growing up and starting to walk around in a house with three other young children, a large dog and toys all over.

He was known to throw tantrums and had earlier that day when he was out of town with his mother, Elliott said.

There was no question Carter's death was horrible, he said.
"But that doesn't mean that he was killed, and it certainly doesn't mean that Mr. Wills was responsible for his death," Elliott said.

The trial is expected to last into next week.

http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...0394931db.html

And another article...
Trial Underway for Lincoln Man Charged with Child Abuse Resulting in Death
http://www.1011now.com/home/headlines/131071703.html

[Dakota Valkyrie]

A Lancaster County District Court jury found Micheal Wills guilty of negligent child abuse Friday morning in the death of toddler Carter Vetter.

Wills, 25, faces up to a year in prison on the charge.

He was accused of inflicting injuries that led to the 23-month-old boy's death on March 2, 2010.

The seven women and five men in the jury got the case late Thursday morning and deliberated until about 8:30 p.m., then resumed their work Friday morning. The verdict was announced about 10:30 a.m.

They could have found him guilty of intentionally abusing the boy or of manslaughter, or they could have found him not guilty.

Vetter's family was disappointed in the verdict, which fould Wills guilty of the least severe crime jurors were allowed to convict him of.

"It feels like we lost him all over again," John Saltzman, Carter's grandfather.
[...]

http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...1f9c96cd8.html

Yesterday:

In a nearly packed courtroom Thursday, the state said Wills slammed Carter's head against something, then put him to bed and left him to die in the hour he was left home alone with Carter, the toddler's sister and one of Wills' daughters.

Wills said Carter had been acting strangely that night, threw up some of his pizza and then threw himself to the floor and hit his head during a temper tantrum at bedtime.

Paramedics found him unresponsive at the home at 3601 Lewis Ave. at about 9:45 p.m., and he was pronounced dead at a Lincoln hospital about an hour later. An autopsy said he died of blunt force trauma.

Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Amy Jacobsen said jurors must decide whether Wills' story makes sense to decide whether the boy's death was accidental.

"It simply couldn't have happened the way Micheal Wills says it did," she said.

Children don't just die from bumping their heads, Jacobsen said. She theorized that when Carter, cranky after a long day, didn't want to go to bed, Wills slammed his head into something.

"I don't have to prove that Micheal Wills meant to kill Carter. I have to prove he intentionally did some act that resulted in the death," she said.

And, she said, tears and bruises documented by Carter's grandmother on weekend visits, were the best evidence. It all began after he and his mother, Katrina Saltzman, moved into a house in Belmont with Wills; his wife, Olivia; and their two kids.

The bruises added up to abuse that escalated to head injuries that led to Carter's death, Jacobsen said.

But Deputy Public Defender Shawn Elliott asked whether the pictures -- taken over four weekends in four months -- were evidence of a pattern of abuse or could be tied to Wills.

By most accounts, Carter appeared to be a happy, healthy child, he said.

Elliott argued the state hadn't proved any crime had occurred and that Carter's injuries could have been the result of a fall.

"The state really hasn't offered any proof this was an inflicted injury," he said.

Even if the state had, Elliott argued, the better suspect was Saltzman, who had been with her son all day as he threw fits at a funeral and who had been rough with her son.

He said the state was asking the jury to go out on a limb that the boy would have shown immediate signs of brain injury.

Elliott took issue with how the autopsy was done and said the medical evidence provided a muddy picture of how Carter died and when the injury occurred.

"It becomes cloudier and cloudier the deeper you dig into the cause of death of this child," he said.

What happened was a tragedy, Elliott said, but he admonished jurors to decide whether the state had met its burden. Elliott said it hadn't.

http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...507cd9e6c.html

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Time served.

Micheal Wills, the Lincoln man convicted of negligent child abuse in connection to the death of a 23-month-old, Wednesday was sentenced to one year in jail.

A Lancaster County jury last month acquitted Wills of child abuse resulting in Carter Vetter's death, opting instead for the misdemeanor. A year was the most Wills could get on the charge, and he's already served more than that term awaiting his trial.

While the courtroom had been nearly full for the trial and verdict in October, it was almost empty Wednesday -- likely because Wills' sentence was no surprise.

Still, his attorney argued for less than the max, saying Wills had a fairly minimal record and hasn't been convicted of allegations involving a chase with deputies.

The state asked for a year.

"The circumstances haven't changed," Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Amy Jacobsen said. "We still have a dead child here."

Wills turned down a chance to say anything before District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront gave the sentence, calling it "a very, very tragic matter."

"I don't know whether Mr. Wills was responsible for the death of Carter Vetter," he said. "There's only one or two people who probably know the answer to that."

But Cheuvront said the jury did find Wills not guilty of the more serious offense. And of all the years he's been a judge, he said it was probably the best group of jurors, who took their job seriously and were emotionally drained at the end.
[...]

Wills, who has been out of jail since the Monday after the verdict, walked out of the third-floor courtroom.

"I feel sorry for Carter's family, about their loss," he said. "But the fact of the matter is, I had nothing to do with it. But it's definitely a very tragic event that happened."

Wills denied from the beginning that he did anything to cause the boy's death, but prosecutors believed he had slammed the boy's head against something, then put him to bed, where his wife later found him not breathing.

Wills spent almost 17 months in jail.

"It was a long, long wait," the 25-year-old said. "I just knew it was coming. It was just a matter of time."

When asked how it felt to know some still think he caused Carter's death, Wills said he thought they were hiding from the truth.

Carter's mother, Katrina Saltzman, and her family weren't in the courtroom Wednesday, but expressed frustration after the verdict.

"It feels like we lost him all over again," Carter's grandfather, John Saltzman, said then.
[...]

http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...6688d7272.html