Months after an autistic teenager died in Wisconsin, a second person faces charges in his death. Jakob Bowerman, 13, was allegedly thrown into a body of water from the Government Pier in Marinette on August 20, 2025. He died on August 23, with his official cause of death ruled as drowning. Shortly after his death, prosecutors charged 21-year-old Tylor Birch with second-degree reckless homicide. Prosecutors recently announced Peyton Carnot, 16, also will face second-degree reckless homicide charges as an adult in the case.
Bowerman apparently didn’t know how to swim and was afraid of deep water, his mother, Taylor Singer, told WBAY shortly after his death. Emergency crews flew Jakob to St. Vincent Hospital in Green Bay, where he remained on life support for several days.
“It’s something that no mother should ever have to go through, you know what I mean. Like to see your son hooked up to all these machines, a tube in their throat,” Singer recalled. “He was having seizures, his body was jerking around constantly, and I would lay on him and try and get the jerking to stop, and they just wouldn’t stop.”
The distraught mother doesn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt her son.
“Kids, they just need to be nice. There’s no reason to pick on people. There’s no reason to think it’s funny to push kids off a pier,” Singer told the outlet. “I don’t know if they think it was funny or what. But we need to do better with our kids and teach them to respect one another.”
According to Fox 11, in Wisconsin, juveniles aged 10 to 16 can face charges as adults in homicide-related cases. Per court documents obtained by the outlet, Birch and Carnot allegedly told police they all jumped into the water together. They claimed that when they saw Bowerman struggling, they tried to help him. Birch and Carnot called 911 when they were unable to get him out of the water.
“Carnot said after 5 minutes of being in the water he climbed out to call 911 because Tylor was trying to hold Bowerman above the water. Carnot confirmed that while they were in the air, leaping from the break wall is when Bowerman allegedly told them that he could not swim,” the complaint alleges, per Fox 11. “Carnot said he and Tylor were trying to hold him up in the water but they kept going under water and were not able to get Bowerman back to the break wall.”
Marinette County District Attorney DeShea Morrow said at a previous court hearing that Bowerman did not want to jump in the deeper water because he was afraid. Instead, he alleged the others “picked him up and threw him in.”
Morrow noted that when the teen was found, he was fully clothed, including socks and shoes.
“Carnot told me that he grabbed Bowerman’s hands and Tylor grabbed Bowerman’s feet, and they swung him off the edge, into the water. Carnot and Tylor then jumped in the water and attempted to help Bowerman out but they could not,” Morrow stated.
Although prosecutors gave Birch and Carnot credit for calling 911, they did not discount their alleged sinister actions.
Per state law, Birch and Carnot could spend the next 25 years in prison if convicted. That seems like a small price to pay in exchange for an innocent kid’s life.
