Domenic Robert Falkner received a 15-year prison sentence in Wisconsin for his role in the 2021 death of his girlfriend's special-needs daughter, Zoey Chafer. The 4-year-old died from acute ethanol toxicity with a blood alcohol level over seven times the legal limit for adults. Falkner's girlfriend, Samantha S. Smith, was sentenced to the same term earlier this year.
Sawyer County Circuit Judge Anthony J. Stella Jr. sentenced 29-year-old Domenic Robert Falkner on Friday to 15 years in a state correctional facility. Falkner had pleaded no contest to repeated physical abuse of a child causing great bodily harm and chronic child negligence resulting in death. In exchange, a first-degree intentional homicide charge was dismissed but read into the record. He will follow the prison term with five years of probation, receiving credit for 1,522 days already served. Smith's sentencing for the same charges occurred in March, also resulting in 15 years imprisonment. Zoey Chafer, diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy as a newborn, was nonverbal, immobile, and reliant on a feeding tube. Falkner moved in with Smith in August 2020 and was a state-approved paid caregiver for the child. Medics responded to a 911 call on July 28, 2021, at an apartment complex in the 15000 block of West 2nd Street in Hayward, Wisconsin, where they pronounced Zoey dead on the scene. Initial blood analysis by the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene revealed a blood alcohol content of .572 g/100mL—more than seven times Wisconsin's legal intoxication limit for adults. The Midwest Medical Examiner's Office later exhumed the body, ruling the death a homicide due to acute ethanol toxicity. The examiner noted: 'The presence of ethanol in a non-ambulatory child is consistent with intentional administration by another. The level of ethanol found... would be a lethal level in non-chronic users and be lethal in a child this age.' Additional findings included abrasions, contusions, and healing fractures indicative of non-accidental trauma. Interviews confirmed Smith and Falkner were the only adults present and the sole operators of Zoey's feeding tube.