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KILLED BY DAD

Father who drunkenly killed baby boy for spilling sippy cup of milk jailed for 15 years

A FATHER who killed his 15-month-old son over spilled milk has been sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

Drunken James L. Georgeson, 33,  beat his son to death after the young boy threw his sippy cup filled with milk in February of 2017.

 James L. Georgeson, 33, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after killing his 15-month-old son for spilling a sippy cup of milk.
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James L. Georgeson, 33, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after killing his 15-month-old son for spilling a sippy cup of milk.Credit: Wood County Sheriff's Department

With long, slick back hair and an unkempt scraggly beard, Georgeson twisted and turned in his seat at the defense table at the Wood County courthouse in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. He sat still as his son's grandmother read a statement on behalf of her daughter, the boy's mother.

"It hurts me every day," the boy's grandmother . "He's in a better place now where he can't get hurt anymore."

The  tot's grandmother said the boy loved music and cars despite having his life cut needlessly short, added: "He has everything he needs and all the music that he wants."

On February 4, 2017, Wisconsin Rapids Police received a 911 call from when he began gasping for air. When police arrived, they found the child unresponsive and with bruising on and around his eye and forehead.

He was rushed to Wisconsin Rapids Hospital, where he died two days later. A doctor cited in the criminal complaint stated, "The injuries are not consistent with a single event and indicate blunt force trauma with a force not generated by a 15-month-old child." An autopsy shows the 15-month-old died from multiple blunt-force injuries to the head.

Georgeson originally told police he had put his son down for a nap and returned to find his blue and struggling to breath. The bruises, Georgeson claimed, came after playing with the boy and throwing him on the couch.

Instead, Georgeson eventually admitted he had been drinking heavily that day and confessed to shaking the 15-month-old after the child threw his sippy cup full of milk.

During the sentencing Friday - which saw Georgeson convicted of second-degree reckless homicide - he said he deserved whatever sentence Wood County Circuit Judge Todd Wolf decided on. Georgeson was already on probation for a child neglect conviction at the time of the incident.

Georgeson took a plea deal that will garner him 15 years of initial confinement in the Wisconsin State Prison system, with an additional 10 years of extended supervision.

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