A Marion County judge handed down the maximum possible punishment today, sentencing 43-year-old Melissa Waiman Schroer to 30 years in state prison for the 2019 death of her two-month-old son, Wailan Roy Schroer. This final ruling by Judge Barbara Kissner follows a May trial where a jury found Melissa Schroer guilty of aggravated manslaughter of a child.
The state pursued the strictest penalty available under the law due to the severe impact on the family. “Here we have a case where one young child senselessly dies, and two other children are forever impacted by their sibling’s death,” said state Chief Walter Forgie of the Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office. “Give this and other contributing circumstances, our Assistant State Attorneys asked for the maximum sentence possible for Schroer and were successful in obtaining the just sentence.”
The criminal case dates back to December 11, 2019, when local law enforcement officers were called to the Villages Hospital regarding a deceased infant. Medical staff pronounced the two-month-old boy dead immediately upon arrival. Officers learned the child had been driven to the emergency room from an Ocala home located off Southeast 36th Avenue after being found unresponsive…