Wasilla man pleads guilty in child death

WASILLA — A former Wasilla High School student pleaded guilty Dec. 11 in Colorado to a charge of child abuse resulting in death, a class-2 felony.

Justin Lee Keel, 26, — a 2004 Wasilla High graduate — will face a range of 24 to 36 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb.15, 2013.

As part of plea agreement with the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office, Keel admitted he inflicted the blunt force trauma to the stomach of 19-month-old Owen Reak, which caused intestinal rupture and fatal internal bleeding resulting in his death April 11.

Keel was arrested May 24 in Grants, N.M., on a warrant alleging one count of child abuse resulting in death, and was held in Grand Junction, Colo., on $1,001,000 bond.

Charges against Keel were upgraded in October to include first-degree murder, but the murder charge was dropped as part of Keel’s Dec. 11 agreement to plead guilty to lesser felony charges.

According to an arrest warrant written by Lissah Norcross, an investigator with the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department, Keel had dated the boy’s mother Amber Reak and was watching the child April 10 while she worked.

In an interview with Norcross, Amber Reak told her the child seemed fine at their apartment that morning.

But while she was showering, she said she heard two loud booms.

“Ms. Reak stated Mr. Keel said the first ‘boom’ was a tippy cup falling off the kitchen table, and the second ‘boom’ was Owen falling off the bed,” Norcross wrote in her warrant.

The baby was discovered deceased in his crib around 4 a.m., April 11 while visiting his paternal grandparents in Montrose, Colo., about 45 minutes south of Grand Junction, according to the affidavit.

Reak had taken her son to visit his grandfather, Jim Milligan, around 10:30 a.m. Shortly after dropping him off there, she told Norcross her father called and told her the boy was vomiting and insisted she take him to a doctor immediately.

The hospital exam included an X-ray of the baby’s abdomen, but doctors said stomach flu — not trauma — was the likely cause of his vomiting.

In the meantime, Reak also agreed to an overnight visit with the child’s paternal grandparents, who also were in town. She dropped the boy off with them around 4 p.m.

He seemed fine around 1 a.m., when his grandmother checked on him in his crib, the affidavit says. But at about 4 a.m. when she checked again he was not breathing and cold to the touch, the affidavit says.

Visit the following link to read a related story: frontiersman.com/news/former-wasilla-man-accused-of-killing-infant/article_83cc0636-b9bd-11e1-ae62-0019bb2963f4.html