Tree service owner gets prison term for teen worker’s death
Former Florida tree service owner John Wilkes was sentenced to 15 years in prison last month after pleading guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child.
Fourteen-year-old Blake Bryant fell more than 50 feet from a tree that Wilkes instructed him to climb and cut with a chainsaw, despite knowing that the teen was not a qualified arborist and lacked proper training to perform such work. (The photo is of the tree from which Bryant fell to his death.)