The father of a 2-year-old girl who died in 2018 mowing accident will not face criminal charges.
A Clackamas County grand jury in June declined to indict Thomas Wieteska, 41, of Happy Valley after prosecutors presented a criminally negligent homicide case against him.
His daughter, Kiely Wieteska, was riding in the bucket of a tractor when she fell out and the tractor drove over her, according to Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office reports. She died at the scene.
Thomas Wieteska was operating the tractor. He was holding his 4-year-old son on his lap at the time, the reports said. It occurred at Wieteska’s mother’s property in the 20000 block of South Mattoon Road in Estacada.
The District Attorney’s Office released the investigative records to The Oregonian/OregonLive Friday in response to a public records request.
Wieteska told authorities that he took his son and daughter to the field that day while he did work on the property. He said he didn’t want Kiely “running around” while he used the tractor to mow and thought she would be safer in the bucket because the machine was moving so slowly, according to the reports.
The girl picked flowers and climbed into the bucket after he asked if she wanted to, he told investigators. Kiely was tiny and her body fit in the bucket completely, he said.
The bucket sat about a foot off the ground and he was driving the tractor at a slow pace, Wieteska said. He couldn’t see her in the bucket as he drove, he said.
He drove a couple of laps, he told police, then heard a sound and “saw a rain boot shoot out the back of the tractor.”
He looked back and saw his daughter lying on the ground about 20 yards behind.
He told police he didn’t know how the child got out of the bucket.
Reached Thursday, Wieteska’s lawyer, Bruce Shepley, declined to comment.
-- Noelle Crombie
503-276-7184
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