Caleb Schachtschneider of St. Lawerence was charged last week with second-degree reckless homicide after Waupaca County’s district attorney filed a Class D felony charge. The charge comes after Schachtschneider’s two-year-old son was the victim of a fatal skid steer accident on April 5th. He’s expected to make his first court appearance on June 1st.
Schachtschneider called 9-1-1 on the day of the accident and told the dispatcher that his son had been crushed by a skid steer. He was using the machinery to move manure while his son was on his lap and fell forward as the bucket was lowering. This is when the boy’s head was pinned between the bucket boom and the frame of the skid steer.
Afterward, the toddler was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Neenah and later moved to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee where he died.
This isn’t the first time Schachtschneider’s sons have been in farming accidents. For example, in 2017 one of his boys, who was five years old at the time got the skin from his knee to his ankle torn off because of the hydraulic bucket of the skid steer. The boy had to be airlifted to the hospital to take care of the injury. Going back two years before that, another one of his sons who was six at the time was driving the skid steer and drove it into his brother. That brother was also sent to the hospital for injuries.
If Schachtschneider is convicted of second-degree reckless homicide, he could be sentenced to 25 years in prison.
