The Coos County investigation shifted from a reported childhood accident to murder and years of alleged violence within the same household.
CHARLESTON, Ore. — The first account deputies received was that a 9-year-old boy had been accidentally stabbed by his sister while the children played with a spear. Within days, that explanation had collapsed, and investigators were preparing to arrest the child’s father for murder.
Nearly a year later, Levi Higgins-Green admitted in court that he was responsible for the boy’s death. On Aug. 31, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder along with six crimes tied to violence or mistreatment involving members of the household. Judge Martin Stone accepted the pleas and sentenced him to a life term with a combined minimum period of 380 months, or 31 years and eight months, according to the Coos County Sheriff’s Office. The result brought a formal end to a case whose central question changed sharply during its first week.
The investigation began Sept. 28, 2025, at a residence off Cape Arago Highway in Charleston, an unincorporated coastal community in Coos County. Deputies responded after a report that the child had been stabbed with a spear. Charleston Fire Department personnel, Bay Cities Ambulance crews and other responders provided emergency care, and the boy was transported to Bay Area Hospital. He died from his injuries. At that stage, officials said the incident had been presented as an accident involving the victim and his sister.
Investigators did not leave the case at that explanation. The sheriff’s office continued examining the circumstances after the emergency response, and on Oct. 3 detectives executed a search warrant at Higgins-Green’s residence. He was arrested and booked into the Coos County Jail on a second-degree murder charge. The sheriff’s office said its investigation had established that the father, not the boy’s sister, stabbed the child. Authorities did not publicly describe the specific evidence recovered during the search or provide a detailed account of how detectives disproved the original version.
That gap has left the public record with a clear conclusion but fewer details about the investigative path used to reach it. The sheriff’s initial release documented the emergency response, the child’s death, the continuing investigation and the later arrest. It did not publish an autopsy narrative, identify particular forensic findings or say precisely who first supplied the accident account. Later secondary reporting attributed the story to Higgins-Green, but the sheriff’s own wording said only that deputies were told the sister had accidentally stabbed the boy during play.
A separate report citing court documents added another account from inside the home. It said a surviving sibling told law enforcement that Higgins-Green stabbed the child after becoming angry during a Pokémon game. Because the underlying court filing has not been included in the sheriff’s public releases, that reported statement adds context but does not resolve every question about what happened before the fatal injury. Officials have not publicly issued a definitive motive, and the guilty plea does not by itself establish every narrative detail contained in later news accounts.
As detectives investigated the killing, they also uncovered what the sheriff’s office described as a history of domestic violence affecting other adults and children in the residence. Officials said that conduct had occurred over years. The agency has intentionally withheld the names of surviving family members at their request. That decision limits the amount of personal information available about the household but also underscores that the criminal case extended well beyond the single fatal incident reported on Sept. 28.
The wider findings ultimately appeared in the charges to which Higgins-Green pleaded guilty. Besides second-degree murder, he admitted strangulation constituting domestic violence, second-degree assault constituting domestic violence, two counts of third-degree assault and two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment. The charge list shows that prosecutors pursued criminal responsibility for separate conduct involving household members rather than treating the case solely as a homicide prosecution centered on the boy’s death.
The sentencing structure reflected that broader case. Stone imposed a combined 80 months for the six non-murder offenses. The second-degree murder conviction brought a life sentence with a minimum term of 300 months, or 25 years. According to the sheriff’s office, the terms produce a combined minimum of 380 months. That equals 31 years and eight months. The total is important because some later reports stated that the minimum was 30 years and eight months, one year shorter than the figure announced by local authorities.
There is also a discrepancy in how some news reports described the charges. The sheriff’s sentencing statement lists two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment. Some secondary accounts called those offenses criminal mischief. The official release supports the criminal-mistreatment description. Similar differences appear in reports about Higgins-Green’s age, with some accounts listing him as 36 and others as 38. Without an authoritative birth date in the publicly reviewed material, his age is not necessary to describe the conviction or sentence.
The prosecution did not proceed to a murder trial because Higgins-Green entered guilty pleas. That means the evidence was not laid out for a jury in the kind of public sequence that can expose investigative reports, witness testimony and forensic findings. Instead, the pleas established his criminal responsibility and moved the proceeding directly toward judgment and punishment. District Attorney Jody Newby prosecuted the case, while the sheriff’s office credited several local and state agencies with assisting investigators.
Among them were Oregon State Police, the Coos Bay Police Department, Eugene Police Department and Kids Hope Center, along with the fire, ambulance and hospital personnel involved in the original response. Their work began in circumstances that could have been handled as a fatal accident had investigators accepted the explanation initially given at the scene. The later search warrant, arrest and guilty pleas show how substantially the case changed once deputies continued examining what had happened inside the home.
The surviving child who was initially placed at the center of the accident account has not been publicly identified by the sheriff’s office. Nor have officials disclosed a detailed statement from that child. The agency’s restraint on family identities leaves the emphasis on the criminal findings rather than on the surviving minors. Authorities have similarly avoided releasing graphic descriptions of the boy’s injuries, stating only the fact necessary to the case: he was fatally stabbed with a spear and died after being taken for emergency treatment.
With Higgins-Green’s pleas accepted and the sentence imposed, the principal criminal case is resolved. The public record now establishes that the boy’s death was not the childhood accident first reported to deputies but a homicide committed by his father, and that the investigation also produced convictions tied to other violence in the household. The sheriff’s office has not announced additional charges or released further details explaining the precise evidence that overturned the initial account.
Author note: Last updated October 21, 2026.