This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
The father of a two-year old boy who drowned in the Siletz River last year will go to trial Wednesday on misdemeanor child neglect charges.
The six-person jury trial in Lincoln County circuit court follows the highly publicized March 1, 2025, disappearance of two-year old Dane Paulsen from his parents’ property along the Siletz River. A massive search effort took place after Dane went missing and he wasn’t found until 10 days later in the river three miles downstream from his home. An autopsy said he died of drowning and had no other injuries.
His parents, Chamet Jackson and Aaron Paulsen, who own the Chowder Bowl restaurant in Depoe Bay, told deputies he was last seen playing in the front yard of their house bordered by the river and Highway 229.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s office, Siletz neighbors and people from across Lincoln County spent 10 days searching for the missing boy, combing forests, the family property, and the river with boats and divers.
More than six months after Dane died, a Lincoln County grand jury issued a secret indictment of Paulsen on one count of second-degree child neglect, which is a misdemeanor. His mother has not been charged with any crime.
The day Dane went missing, his mother left him in the living room of their home with her husband who was watching television and checking his phone while she helped her father in a nearby trailer on their property, according to police records in Lincoln County circuit court. The documents say Aaron “watched Dane walk out the back sliding glass door alone.”
Later, Jackson told investigators she heard Dane knocking on the door of the trailer and thought “oh shit, the baby’s out.” But after not hearing any more sounds, Jackson said she thought Dane went back inside their house.
Judge Amanda Benjamin has made several rulings on motions by attorneys in the case. One was to not allow testimony of a former Lincoln City neighbor, the other was to allow testimony from a boy who saw Dane unchaperoned a year before he drowned.
In 2024, the teenager who was driving through Siletz pulled over when he “noticed a small male child approximately two years old standing on Highway 229,” according to a detective’s report. After pulling over to try and talk to Dane, the boy moved farther away from the property. The teenager ended up grabbing Dane and walking him back to his home and informed his parents, the teenager reported.
District Attorney Jenna Wallace filed a petition to call more than 10 witnesses, but did not say how many she actually expected to call during the trial, which is scheduled for five days.
In a November court hearing, Wallace gave some reasons why she took the investigation’s report to the grand jury.
“The supervisor did not follow after him, and Dane was left unattended for about 15 minutes before parents noticed that he was missing. The investigation later revealed that Dane did end up down the river trail on the property which had not been blocked off by the parents and ultimately drowned in the river.”
Jackson has been critical of the investigation of her son’s death and has denied her husband played a role in his death. Others close to the family have also been critical of the district attorney’s decision to charge Paulsen with a misdemeanor. Juan Heredia, the California diver who found Dane’s body, sent a plea to officials not to further harm an already grieving mother.
“Due to publicity the public in Lincoln County is at substantial risk to have been exposed to publicity and blaming the defendant for the death of his son,” Paulsen’s attorney Richard Cohen wrote.
Cohen said Paulsen believes his child was abducted from their yard and asserts he did not neglect his child. His lawyer argued unsuccessfully for the trial to be postponed because Paulsen believed “… law enforcement did not competently investigate a known suspect connected to the theory of abduction of the child.”
Cohen’s asked that the trial be postponed so that a detective who is out of town could be available as a witness. But that request was denied by Benjamin during a trial readiness hearing Tuesday. Having a more in-depth investigation of the alternate suspect theory is not relevant to the charges of whether Paulsen neglected his child or not, Benjamin said.
“It would create a different trial and distract the jury,” the judge said.
Paulsen is also scheduled for trial in August for assault and reckless endangerment charges involving a January fight with his wife’s brother on their property. A judge has since ruled twice that Paulsen is to have no contact with his wife.