photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Connor Weil waits while a jury deliberates after his trial for felony battery and criminal threat on March 25, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

One side said a father pushed a mother down the stairs during an argument and threatened to crush her with a dresser. The other side said the mother made up the story to bolster her chances in a custody battle.

Jurors in Douglas County District Court on Tuesday had to decide which they believed, and after two hours of deliberation, they found the father, 21-year-old Connor Ray Weil, not guilty of felony aggravated battery and felony criminal threat.

After the verdict was read, Weil and his mother began to cry, and at least two of the jurors appeared to wipe tears from their eyes, too. The woman who had accused Weil — the 27-year-old mother of their infant child — was not in the courtroom.

Weil’s trial began on Monday, when the woman gave her account of their relationship and what happened at their house in June of 2024.

She said that she and Weil had met in the summer of 2023 and, within months, had moved in together after she became pregnant. But by the time the baby was born in February 2024, the relationship had soured and grown contentious. The baby was a month premature, she said, and had to be on oxygen for months after being brought home from the NICU in March 2024.

Two days after the woman brought the baby home from the hospital, she filed for sole custody to prevent Weil from seeing the child. However, the two still lived in the same home together. She said she couldn’t get out of the lease, and Weil refused to sign documents releasing her from her obligation.

The court initially awarded the woman sole discretion over when Weil could see the child, but on June 12, 2024, the court granted Weil unsupervised visitation rights.

The altercation at the center of the case took place four days after that: June 16, 2024.

The woman said that Weil frequently vaped around the baby, and that she believed he did so to spite her. On that day, she testified that Weil stood near the baby’s bassinet and took a drag from his vaping device.

“He hit his vape and blew smoke in the baby’s face,” the woman said.

Then, she said Weil walked upstairs to go to his room and she followed him up to confront him. At the top of the stairs, she testified, she told him not to vape in front of the baby again.

“He told me, ‘No one is going to believe you,'” the woman testified. She said that was a frequent response when the two were arguing.

Then, the woman testified, as she was turning to go back downstairs, Weil shoved her down the stairs. She said that she bruised her legs as she skidded down to the bottom, and that as she lay there staring at Weil, he told her not to move.

“I started to get up, and he said he was going to push the dresser on top of me,” she said.

The dresser, which Assistant District Attorney Adam Carey showed the jury a photo of, had been sitting in the narrow hallway at the top of the stairs for a while in preparation for possibly moving out of the apartment. The woman testified that she was frightened by Weil’s tone.

“He sounded calm. That’s what was scary. He said it so nonchalantly, like he didn’t care,” the woman said.

After that, the woman said Weil went to his room, and she called 911.

Carey played the 911 call, in which the woman, in a hushed and trembling voice, says she was pushed down the stairs. Within minutes, police and medics arrived. A Lawrence police officer’s body camera footage showed the woman’s knees were swollen and some bruising had started to show, and the woman took photos over the next week that showed the bruises changing colors.

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Weil, on the other hand, said he’d not interacted with the woman that night, and that he had no idea anything was amiss until the police and ambulance showed up.

On Tuesday morning, Weil took the stand and denied the allegations against him. That night, he had gotten back from visiting family in Wichita, and he said he immediately went back outside after he returned to let his dog out. He said when he came back in, he intentionally avoided contact with the woman and the baby and went upstairs to bed.

Weil’s attorney, Matthew Fredrick, showed a video taken from security cameras that were installed in Weil’s bedroom. It showed Weil walk into his room one minute before the woman made the 911 call, at 11:21 p.m., unpack his bags and lie down.

Just over 10 minutes later, Weil said he saw the lights of the ambulance outside of the house, which he said was the first indication he had that something was wrong. He said he saw the woman carrying the baby to the ambulance and thought the baby had been hurt.

Fredrick argued that when police arrived, there were no barking dogs, no crying baby, no evidence that any kind of confrontation had occurred.

What Weil thought really happened was that the woman fabricated the story to strengthen her claim that she should have sole custody of the baby.

“That was the motive from day one,” Weil said.

Fredrick argued that for the woman’s account to be true, the entire incident would have had to have occurred in just a couple of minutes. He said Weil had sent text messages to his mother at 11:17 p.m. while he was outside walking the dog, and that he was in his room about three to four minutes later.

Carey said he thought it was entirely possible: “Rage happens in a second,” he said.

But Fredrick said it would make no sense that Weil would work for months to get custody rights and within days, would blow it in a fit of rage.

“The state has completely and utterly failed at meeting its burden,” Fredrick said.