Stanley Rimer sentenced to prison for 4-year-old’s death in hot vehicle

By Dave Toplikar

Published Tuesday, May 31, 2011 | 1:10 p.m.

Updated Tuesday, May 31, 2011 | 3:05 p.m.

Stanley Rimer was sentenced by a Las Vegas judge today to a total of eight to 30 years in prison in connection with the death of his 4-year-old special needs son, Jason, who died after being left in the family's hot vehicle on June 8, 2008.

Rimer, 54, was sentenced by Judge Douglas Herndon after Rimer made a plea for probation and told the judge he wanted to set up the Jason Foundation in honor of his son.

In handing down the sentence, Herndon shouted at Rimer at one point and also chastised Rimer for never saying that he was sorry for his role in his son's death. Rimer had insisted that he had gone to bed that day and his wife was in charge of getting the boy out of the vehicle, where he died and was found 17 hours later by one of his brothers.

"In terms of the Jason Foundation ... I don't know if Jason would have wanted you to start the foundation. But I do know that Jason wanted you to go find him, to simply walk out of bed and go find your son," Herndon told Rimer.

Herndon said that Rimer sat up in his bedroom and didn't check on his disabled 4-year-old son through lunch, through dinner, through bath time and through bedtime.

"When the hell were you going to go check on him?" Herndon shouted. "When does your responsibility as a parent kick in to want to see your child to find out how he is doing? He's four years old and disabled! And here's the thing: He was dead before dinner. But your conscious indifference to even looking for him there after tells me everything I need to know about how much you really didn't care about what was going on in your house with that child. You can say all you want right now. But those actions speak louder than anything else. You left his body in that car for 13-some odd hours to roast in the sun and through the night into the next day until another boy found him."

Herndon told Rimer that his children seemed to have a lot of love for their mother and tolerance for him at best.

Rimer was given credit for already serving 611 days.

Both Stanley Rimer and his wife, Colleen, were convicted March 1 of involuntary manslaughter in Jason’s death and with multiple counts of neglect and child abuse of Jason and their other special needs son, Aaron. Stanley Rimer was also convicted of the child abuse and neglect of three of their other sons.

At the request of Colleen Rimer’s attorney, Michael Sanft, the judge decided to continue the sentencing for Colleen Rimer to 9 a.m. July 21 to allow for further evaluation of her medical condition.

Stanley Reimer’s attorney, Tim O’Brien, asked that Stanley Reimer’s sentencing also be continued to the same date, to keep both cases together. However, the judge said he wanted to go ahead with the sentence today.

The judge also denied a motion by O’Brien to dismiss one of the counts against Stanley Reimer. O’Brien said that if not, his client would be sentenced to two separate crimes for the same conduct, involuntary manslaughter and abuse, neglect or endangerment, which would be redundant.

Herndon ruled that the jury conviction on the two counts were not redundant. However, the judge told O’Brien he could argue for concurrent sentences, rather than consecutive sentences, on those two counts.