The prison sentence for Samantha S. Smith revived scrutiny of medical visits, school concerns and child-welfare decisions that came before the girl’s death.
HAYWARD, Wis. — When a Wisconsin judge sent Samantha S. Smith to prison last month in the death of her daughter, Zoey Chafer, the sentence answered one question about punishment but brought the case’s harder question back into view: how a medically fragile child could suffer repeated injuries before anyone stopped it.
That question has followed the case since Zoey died on July 28, 2021, with a blood alcohol level of .572 after alcohol was introduced into the feeding tube she depended on for food and hydration. Prosecutors said Smith and Smith’s boyfriend, Domenic Falkner, were the only adults handling the tube in the hours before the child’s death. But long before investigators reached that final allegation, records described bruises, fractures, swelling and repeated hospital visits. The story of Zoey’s death has become, in Wisconsin, both a homicide case and a public test of how suspected abuse reports move through the system.
The paper trail began well before the child died. After Falkner moved into the home in August 2020, Zoey’s father reported bruising on Zoey and on one of her siblings after the children returned from Smith’s care. Over the months that followed, medical visits recorded fractures in October 2020, a new fracture in November, multiple healing fractures in December and more fractures in January 2021. By spring, school employees were taking photographs of bruising. On April 9, 2021, Zoey was seen at a hospital after staff noted injuries that included a severely darkened eye. In May and June, more fractures were documented. On July 12, just over two weeks before her death, medical personnel noted facial and cranial bruising and swelling. According to investigators, genetic testing did not show a hereditary cause for the broken bones.
The adults around Zoey offered explanations that shifted from visit to visit, according to the complaint and local reporting. At one point, Smith said she bumped her daughter during a treatment. At other times, the complaint said, she denied knowing how the injuries happened. Doctors reviewing the records reached a far different conclusion. Investigators said several physicians and an independent child-abuse expert determined the pattern fit abuse, not accident. Yet Zoey remained in the same orbit of care. Wisconsin’s child-protection process helped explain part of that gap. State officials told local reporters that calls to child protective services are first evaluated by an access professional, who decides whether the allegations meet the legal threshold for suspected abuse. If a report is screened out, noncustodial parents are not necessarily notified. County leaders declined public comment while investigations were pending.
The final emergency came on a summer morning in Hayward. Emergency crews were sent to an apartment on West 2nd Street after a report that Zoey could not be awakened. She was later pronounced dead. The coroner did not order an autopsy at once, but did draw blood. That sample changed everything. State lab testing found a .572 alcohol level, more than seven times the legal intoxication threshold for an adult driver. Zoey’s body was exhumed, and the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her death a homicide caused by acute ethanol toxicity. The examiner wrote that ethanol in a child who could not walk or feed herself was consistent with intentional administration by another and described abrasions, contusions and healing fractures that also raised concern for non-accidental trauma.
From there, the criminal case and the policy debate began to run side by side. Smith eventually pleaded guilty to chronic neglect of a child and no contest to repeated physical abuse causing great bodily harm, while a first-degree intentional homicide charge was dismissed but read in for sentencing. Judge Anthony J. Stella Jr. sentenced her to 15 years in prison and five years of supervised release. Falkner, who had been an approved paid caregiver through Sawyer County Human Services, later resolved his own case and is set to be sentenced May 1. Meanwhile, lawmakers promoted “Zoey’s Law,” saying Wisconsin should require child-welfare agencies to send reports of suspected physical abuse, mental abuse or neglect to police within 12 hours, the same deadline already used for suspected sexual abuse or trafficking cases.
The family’s public comments gave the case its emotional center and its civic force. Zoey’s father said he was grateful the coroner drew blood because, without that step, the family might never have known alcohol was involved. He also said he and relatives felt let down after earlier bruises and fractures did not trigger stronger action. Those frustrations echoed in hearings and press statements as supporters of the bill argued the system failed at the screening stage. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the measure on March 27, saying it could flood local agencies with referrals and strain law enforcement resources. Even so, the bill’s backers have said they plan to keep pushing the issue, making Zoey’s name likely to remain part of Wisconsin’s child-welfare debate long after the criminal sentencings end.
As of now, the case stands in two places at once: one defendant has been sentenced, another is still awaiting punishment, and the broader dispute over what should have happened after the first bruises were seen is still very much alive.
Author note: Last updated April 6, 2026.