Michael Orts
/ photo from Onondaga County Sheriff's Department
NORTH SYRACUSE -- A Salina man has been charged in the death of his father nearly one year ago.
Michael Orts, 21, was arraigned in Town of Cicero Court Thursday afternoon on a charge of criminally negligent homicide.
Onondaga County Sheriff's deputies say last June, they were called to the home of Ort's father, 55-year-old Wayne Orts, on Clover Road in North Syracuse. That's in a neighborhood off Thompson Road, just north fo Route 481. Officers were there to investigate an attempted suicide. Wayne Orts told them he had taken several Hydrocodone pills. He died at the hospital about three hours later.
During the autopsy, the medical examiner discovered Ort's spleen had been ruptured by "blunt trauma." That's when investigators began to get suspicious about how he actually died.
During the investigation, detectives found out Wayne and Michael had gotten into a physical fight the day the elder Orts died. They say that fight caused the spleen injury that actually killed him.
Criminally negligent homicide is a class E felony.
