SKYLER SEILS - 3 yo (2010) and his mother, CARRIE - Clinton (SW Of Ann Arbor) MI

The 13-year-old girl said she was watching her friend skateboard on
Schafer Street when the shiny black Jaguar drove by and pulled into a
driveway. A man got out and went in the front door of a one-story house.
The girl heard three loud bangs. After a few minutes, the
man came back out, gave them a smile and a wave and drove away, she testified.
She was unaware that inside that home, a mother and her
3-year-old son lay dead. A little girl and an adult male were also hurt.
The man she saw enter and leave the house, 37-year-old Todd Michael
Pink, is accused of shooting and stabbing the victims.
The ex-convict was bound over to Macomb County Circuit
Court July 12 on 15 felony charges, including two counts of premeditated
murder, two counts of assault with intent to murder and a slew of other charges.
The trouble started May 15 at the Downtown Hoedown. Carrie
Seils, one of the victims, was at the event with her children,
3-year-old Skyler and 5-year-old Heavyn, along with Pink and James
Pagano, who calls himself Seils’ best friend.
Pink allegedly got in several arguments with strangers at
the Hoedown and the four left and headed back to Clinton Township.
Seils, 35, and Pink argued on the way home, and when they got back to
the Schafer Street house, Pink left.
He wasn’t gone long. Pagano said Pink came back less than a
half hour later and forced his way inside.
“He kicked (the door) in, pulled out a handgun from his
waist,” Pagano testified in 41-B District Court. “That’s all I remember.”
Pagano said he was unconscious for about 45 minutes after
Pink allegedly shot him in the face. When he came to, he found Carrie
Seils lying on the ground with Skyler’s body at her feet.
“I found Heavyn crying,” Pagano recalled. “There was a lot
of blood everywhere, especially on Carrie. Skyler wasn’t moving at all;
Carrie wasn’t moving at all.”
Pagano took the crying girl to a neighbor’s house and asked them to call police.
Macomb County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Daniel Spitz said
Seils was shot in the head at close range. Her son was stabbed 15 times
and died of blood loss and a brain injury, Spitz said.
“This wasn’t just a knife, this was some type of heavier
instrument,” similar to a meat cleaver, he testified. Another weapon
similar to a two-pronged fork was also used, Spitz said.
Pagano and Heavyn have since recovered from their injuries.
Later that evening, the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office SWAT
team arrested Pink after a struggle at his sister’s Macomb Township
home off Romeo Plank Road, where he had fled after the murder.
His sister testified she met him at the house after a
frantic phone call from her brother. She alerted authorities that he was there.
Pink will be arraigned in Circuit Court July 26. Skyler and
Heavyn Seils’ father, 36-year-old Chad Seils of Warren, said he hopes
for a conviction, but won’t stop there.
“(Pink) has been trouble for a long time. He should’ve been
locked up a long time ago,” Seils said after the exam. “The system failed.”
Pink has a long criminal history and served time in prison
for a variety of charges. Seils says he never should have been released.
“It’s bad enough I have to go through this, but the system
needs to change,” he said.
Seils said he’s trying to stay strong for his surviving
daughter, Heavyn. She doesn’t talk much about the day of the murders
anymore, but she remembers a lot, Seils said.
“We’ll have to get through this,” he said. “She just wants
to give her mom and her brother a hug and kiss. She misses them.”
Seils and other family members wore shirts with pictures of
Skyler and images of Spider-Man, his favorite character to court.

Chad Seils was relieved this afternoon to learn a jury decided the
Clinton Township man who brutally murdered his 3-year-old son will spend
the rest of his life behind bars. "Justice was served," said
Seils, 37, of Muskegon. "Unfortunately, it doesn't bring my son back.
But this is movement forward. It brings me closure knowing he's going to
be in jail for the rest of his life."A Macomb County Circuit Court jury deliberated less than 30 minutes
today before finding Todd Pink guilty on 14 felony counts, including two
counts each of first-degree and felony murder, in a May 15 attack that
claimed the lives of 35-year-old Carrie Seils and her son, Skyler.
Seils' daughter, Heavyn, then 5, and Seils' best friend, James Pagano,
were injured.



Carrie Seils' relatives did not attend the trial. When jurors
delivered their decision, Circuit Judge Richard Caretti thanked them for
the difficult task of evaluating the horrifying evidence. Pink will be
sentenced to mandatory life on May 17. "This was one of the most
difficult cases and arguably one of the most brutal to be heard in the
Macomb County Circuit Court," he told the panel prior to dismissing
them. Prosecutors say Pink may have been drunk, but he was
thinking clearly when he executed the horrific attack with a gun and
knives. "He was mad. And because he was mad four people paid for
it: two with their lives and two within inches of their lives," Macomb
County Assistant Prosecutor Therese Tobin told the jury during closing
statements. "There is no evidence to show this is anything other
than deliberate. There's nothing impulsive about the defendant's
actions. His intent to kill was clear." Tobin said Pink planned a
"blitz attack." He left Seils' rental home on Schafer after a drunken
evening out at the Downtown Hoedown. Seils and Pagano argued with
him about his behavior at the event, in the car and once they arrived
back at the home. He then drove for more than 20 minutes to his father's
home in Sterling Heights, retrieved a gun, made the trip back and burst
into the home. Tobin said Pink fired first at Pagano, striking
him in the face. Then he moved on to Seils, shooting her in the side of
the head with Heavyn and Skyler nearby. Tobin said Seils dropped to the
ground. "The gun jammed. He proceeded to the knife block," she
told the jury. "There he grabbed utensils we use on meat and decided to
use them on two young children." Pink did not testify in the
trial despite an earlier claim by his attorney, Kendall Sailler, that he
would do so. Sailler told the jury that it wasn't Pink's choice.
Sailler made the decision because it "would be bad for him to get on the
stand and testify." Sailler said everybody was down on Pink and he wasn't "emotionally equipped to begin with." Sailler has said that while his client acknowledged he was responsible for the deaths, he did not plan them or intend to kill. "He snapped. He flipped out," Sailler told the jury. "He lost it and something else took over. He was broken inside." Sailler
said instead that Pink returned to the home that evening to kill
himself in front of Seils. He said struggles ensued with both Seils and
Pagano, resulting in inadvertent discharges of the weapon. Sailler
argued prosecutors were overcharging Pink and urged the jury to toss
out counts of first-degree home invasion and resisting and obstructing
police. He also urged them to consider a second-degree murder
conviction. Sailler left the courthouse without comment. Pink's
family was not in the courthouse today during closing statements nor
were they present for the verdict. Juror Gerald Mangus said the evidence was "horrific." "This
involved a young child. It was premeditated as far as I'm concerned,"
he said. "Some of the evidence we had to look through is horrific. I
wouldn't wish it on anybody. But I do think justice was served."
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110415/METRO03/104150428/Todd-Pink-found-guilty-in-double-murder#ixzz1JeQo9Ynp