Attorneys for the family of 8-year-old Martonio Wilder announced a wrongful-death lawsuit on Thursday, putting Franklin County and several child welfare-related defendants at the center of a case that has already raised hard questions about how he ended up dead in his mother’s home.
The suit names Franklin County Children Services, the National Youth Advocacy Program, caseworker Haleigh Ingham, additional Franklin County officials and Franklin County Job & Family Services. Martonio’s body was found by Columbus police inside a trash bag in the attic of his mom’s home, and an autopsy later determined he died in June 2024 from asphyxiation caused by neck compression. The same examination found severe malnutrition and dehydration.
That is why the filing is drawing attention now. It adds a new public challenge to agencies that had some role in the child’s case, and it does so with a specific allegation: that the people and organizations charged with protecting him ignored warning signs and failed to monitor his safety closely enough to keep him out of danger. In the family’s telling, the failure was not isolated to one moment but stretched across the period when Martonio was supposed to be watched.
Court records add a detail that deepens the case. Before Martonio died, a relative warned Columbus police that Martonio and other children would be tortured, abused and placed in danger if they were returned home with their mother, Lashanda Wilder. The children were allowed to leave with her anyway. The lawsuit argues that decision, along with later failures to monitor the family, left Martonio in a dangerous home environment that should have been flagged sooner.
The claims also circle back to custody. Lashanda Wilder had previously lost custody of Martonio before regaining it through the National Youth Advocacy Program, which provided support for case management involving him and his family. Haleigh Ingham worked for NYAP, linking the agency directly to the oversight the family now says broke down. For the attorneys, the issue is not only what happened inside the house, but who was supposed to be checking on him and why that protection failed.
Robert Gresham said the civil action is aimed at what happened outside the home, asking who was responsible for checking on Martonio and who failed to verify his safety. Anthony Pierson said the community failed the boy at every step and that the case is larger than one child, because it raises the basic question of whether the agencies built to protect children are actually doing that job.
For now, the lawsuit makes one point unmistakable: Martonio was not simply lost to a private family tragedy. If the allegations prove out, his death was the result of a chain of missed warnings, weak oversight and a system that left him where others had already said he was in danger.
