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NEWTON —
Chad Carr pleaded guilty on Thursday to a charge of second-degree murder in connection with the death of a North Newton toddler, Vincent Hill.
Twenty-eight-year-old Carr signed a plea agreement, in which he also pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated battery and one count of abuse of a child. He will be sentenced on Jan. 17, 2012, and could serve a prison term of about 20 years.
Carr has waived his rights to a trail and will remain in custody until the sentencing.
It brought some sense of closure to a tragedy that had deeply impacted the quiet community of North Newton, which previously had never had a recorded homicide.
“Absolutely nothing is going to bring Vincent back,” Harvey County Attorney David Yoder said. “... What we have to do at this time is to see justice.”
Vincent Hill died on March 27, 2010. An autopsy revealed multiple injuries to the child’s body, and his brain showed signs of oxygen depletion, consistent with suffocation.
Yoder said Carr killed Vincent “unintentionally but recklessly,” and added it was the most brutal case of child abuse he had ever seen.
He said he agonized over whether or not it was better to let the case go to trial, and try to get a longer sentence for Carr, but he finally settled on this option.
“There’s not a strong or long enough sentence that would give justice to the brutal death this child suffered,” he said. “... Everyone agreed it was better to take the certain thing.”
After the hearing, Vincent’s father, Richard Hill, said no matter how long Carr’s sentence will be, it won’t bring his son back.
“I’m still not going to be able to watch my boy grow up,” he said.
Hill said he wished he had been a better husband to his wife, Katheryn Nycole Dale, mother of Vincent, and it was hard watching Chad Carr take his family away.
“When he had it, he just threw it against the wall,” Hill said.
He said he would do anything to have a chance to go back in time and change what happened, and now he is an advocate for ending child abuse. He even has a tattoo in memory of his son and hopes to save other children from suffering the same fate as Vincent.
“I want his life, it was short, and I want it to mean more,” he said. “I don’t want it to be just some tragedy that happened. I want his death to make more people aware.”
Chad Carr pleaded guilty on Thursday to a charge of second-degree murder in connection with the death of a North Newton toddler, Vincent Hill.
Twenty-eight-year-old Carr signed a plea agreement, in which he also pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated battery and one count of abuse of a child. He will be sentenced on Jan. 17, 2012, and could serve a prison term of about 20 years.
Carr has waived his rights to a trail and will remain in custody until the sentencing.
It brought some sense of closure to a tragedy that had deeply impacted the quiet community of North Newton, which previously had never had a recorded homicide.
“Absolutely nothing is going to bring Vincent back,” Harvey County Attorney David Yoder said. “... What we have to do at this time is to see justice.”
Vincent Hill died on March 27, 2010. An autopsy revealed multiple injuries to the child’s body, and his brain showed signs of oxygen depletion, consistent with suffocation.
Yoder said Carr killed Vincent “unintentionally but recklessly,” and added it was the most brutal case of child abuse he had ever seen.
He said he agonized over whether or not it was better to let the case go to trial, and try to get a longer sentence for Carr, but he finally settled on this option.
“There’s not a strong or long enough sentence that would give justice to the brutal death this child suffered,” he said. “... Everyone agreed it was better to take the certain thing.”
After the hearing, Vincent’s father, Richard Hill, said no matter how long Carr’s sentence will be, it won’t bring his son back.
“I’m still not going to be able to watch my boy grow up,” he said.
Hill said he wished he had been a better husband to his wife, Katheryn Nycole Dale, mother of Vincent, and it was hard watching Chad Carr take his family away.
“When he had it, he just threw it against the wall,” Hill said.
He said he would do anything to have a chance to go back in time and change what happened, and now he is an advocate for ending child abuse. He even has a tattoo in memory of his son and hopes to save other children from suffering the same fate as Vincent.
“I want his life, it was short, and I want it to mean more,” he said. “I don’t want it to be just some tragedy that happened. I want his death to make more people aware.”
