A Wisconsin man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the death of his girlfriend’s 4-year-old special-needs daughter, who was found with a blood alcohol level more than seven times the legal limit for an adult — administered, prosecutors say, through her feeding tube.
Sawyer County Circuit Judge Anthony J. Stella Jr. handed down the sentence on Friday, ordering Domenic Robert Falkner to serve 15 years in a state correctional facility followed by five years of probation. Falkner had pleaded no contest to one count each of repeated physical abuse of a child causing great bodily harm and chronic child negligence resulting in death in the 2021 killing of Zoey Chafer.
A charge of first-degree intentional homicide was dismissed but read into the record as part of the plea agreement. The court credited Falkner with 1,522 days of time already served. Zoey’s mother, Samantha S. Smith, was sentenced to the same 15-year term in March after pleading to identical charges, the Dryden Wire reported.
Zoey had been diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy at birth. She was nonverbal, unable to move independently, and relied on a feeding tube for all nutrition and hydration. Falkner moved into the home in August 2020 and was an approved, state-paid caregiver for the child.
When medics arrived at the residence, Zoey was pronounced dead at the scene. The Sawyer County Coroner’s Office initially did not order an autopsy but collected a blood sample for analysis. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene later determined that Zoey had a blood alcohol content of .572 g/100mL at the time of her death.
To put that figure in context, a BAC of .08 is the legal threshold for intoxication for adults in Wisconsin. University of Notre Dame research indicates that adults begin losing motor control and risk blacking out between .20 and .249. Levels between .25 and .399 constitute alcohol poisoning, and anything above .40 risks coma and death from respiratory failure.
Following those findings, the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office exhumed Zoey’s body. The subsequent autopsy ruled her death a homicide, citing “acute ethanol toxicity” as the cause.
“The presence of ethanol in a non-ambulatory child is consistent with intentional administration by another. The level of ethanol found in her pre-embalmed body would be a lethal level in non-chronic users and be lethal in a child this age,” the medical examiner wrote in the report.
The examiner also documented injuries pointing to physical abuse. “The abrasions, contusions, and healing fractures in this non-ambulatory child are also concerning for non-accidental trauma,” the report stated.
In interviews with detectives, both Smith and Falkner acknowledged they were the only adults present in the home during the period when the alcohol was introduced into Zoey’s system, and the only people who operated her feeding tubes.
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