Grantsville father booked for child abuse of 1-year-old, not expected to survive

GRANTSVILLE, Utah — A father is in police custody after police found a 1-year-old boy with life-threatening injuries.

According to Grantsville police, 44-year-old Aaron Visser called 911 around 5:28 p.m. on Friday for his boy, that was not breathing at his home.

First responders performed life-saving measures and airlifted the boy to Primary’s Children’s Hospital.

Officers noticed that the boy had multiple injuries and bruises on his body.

In the arresting documents, the boy had “bruising on the right side of his forehead” and “multiple small bruises across his forehead with another large bruise on the left side of the boy’s forehead.”

The boy also had discolored eyes with small abrasions on his eyelids and eyebrows, multiple small scrapes on his chin, more bruises on his feet, and abrasions in the “form of a human bite mark.”

While at the hospital, nursing staff confirmed the boy had multiple internal injuries such as a “brain bleed, a fractured rib which was in the stages of healing, a freshly fractured rib, and a bruise on one of the lungs.”

They also found another bite mark on his right hand.

Police interviewed three of the boy’s siblings, and they accused Visser of being abusive toward them and the boy.

One of the siblings commented that the boy kept getting injured while in Visser’s room, with Visser telling them that the boy “constantly falls off of the bed.”

During the evening of the incident, the siblings said that Visser was “very upset about being woke up by the boy and his twin brother,” along with their mother asking Visser to bring her something to work.

According to arresting documents, a sibling heard a loud thud in Visser’s room, followed by the boy’s crying, and overheard that Visser possibly poisoned the boy while talking on the phone.

Police interviewed Visser, but he denied knowing what happened to the boy and his injuries.

However, Visser kept changing his story claiming that the boy’s “siblings were being rough” and the boy had fallen on his own.

Visser eventually confessed that he was “playing a game” where he threw the boy on his bed but misjudged the toss, and the boy had “bounced head over the end of the bed and hit the ground.”

The arresting documents said that the boy’s injuries were both new and preexisting and showed a pattern of abuse on multiple different occasions.

Visser was booked in the Tooele County Detention Center for felony aggravated child abuse.

In a Facebook post from Grantsville police, doctors said the boy is on life support and is not likely to survive his injuries.

If the boy dies, police say Visser could face child abuse homicide.