The Lakeview teenager’s death followed repeated reports about his welfare after his mother removed him from school.

LAKEVIEW, Ore. — An Oregon mother and her longtime partner have been sentenced to life in prison in the death of Thomas Strong, a Lakeview teenager whose body was found in a cardboard box in the family’s garage after authorities received months of warnings about possible abuse and neglect.

Amanda Edwards, 40, was sentenced July 27 to life with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years for murder by abuse, second-degree abuse of a corpse and first-degree criminal mistreatment, according to the Oregon Department of Justice. Nathan Cullins, 33, was sentenced July 21 to life with no possibility of parole for at least 35 years for first-degree murder, second-degree abuse of a corpse and first-degree criminal mistreatment. The sentences closed the criminal cases more than a year after Strong’s body was discovered and shifted renewed attention to the actions of Oregon’s child welfare system before his death.

Strong lived with Edwards, his mother, and Cullins, Edwards’ longtime romantic partner, in Lakeview, a small community in southern Oregon. Authorities said the Oregon Department of Human Services began receiving reports raising concerns about Strong’s safety after Edwards abruptly removed him from Lakeview High School in November 2024. School employees and the agency tried over the following weeks to coordinate services for the teenager, but state prosecutors said Edwards resisted those efforts. An independent investigation later concluded that some of the earliest reports were screened out and that direct contact with Strong became increasingly limited as he disappeared from public view.

The case reached its critical point on Feb. 18, 2025, when the Department of Human Services obtained a child protective custody order from Lake County Circuit Court. Officials serving that order found Strong’s body in a cardboard box in the garage at the residence, according to the Justice Department. An autopsy determined that he had experienced extensive injuries associated with long-term abuse and died from blunt-force trauma. Investigators also recovered video footage of abuse that authorities said had been recorded by Edwards and Cullins themselves. Officials have not publicly released the recordings, and the Justice Department described their existence without publishing their disturbing contents.

The date of Strong’s death requires an important distinction. His obituary lists his birth date as Feb. 17, 2008, and says he was found dead on Feb. 18, 2025, making him 17 when his body was discovered. Disability Rights Oregon, which reviewed child welfare records and other materials, estimated that he had died on or about Feb. 1 and had been dead for two to three weeks before authorities entered the home. Under that estimate, Strong would have been 16 when he died. State officials have generally referred to him as a 17-year-old because that was his age when his body was found.

Warning signs had been accumulating well before the discovery. Disability Rights Oregon said Strong’s final day at school was Nov. 15, 2024. The advocacy group, which serves as Oregon’s federally designated protection and advocacy organization for people with disabilities, reconstructed the months that followed using child welfare reports, school records and interviews. Its report said a first hotline call on Dec. 11 raised concerns that Strong had lost a significant amount of weight and had been pulled out of school. The group said the Department of Human Services screened that report out after determining that it did not contain an allegation requiring a child protective investigation.

A second report followed after a school principal and a school resource officer visited the home, according to the advocacy group’s review. That report described additional concerns about Strong’s appearance, continued school absence and conditions inside the residence. Disability Rights Oregon said the agency also screened out that report. A third complaint on Dec. 17 led the department to open an investigation into possible neglect, lack of supervision and failure to provide for Strong’s needs. The organization said state workers interviewed Strong and Edwards in December but had little direct contact with the teenager after that meeting even though the child welfare case remained open.

In the weeks that followed, records reviewed by Disability Rights Oregon showed school employees continued pressing for action while efforts to connect the family with services produced little progress. Strong’s primary care provider had not seen him since August 2024, the report said. A mental health provider reported that Edwards did not schedule an appointment to which the family had been referred. The advocacy group said the agency relied heavily on phone calls, messages and parental cooperation rather than repeated in-person assessments of Strong. On Feb. 6, Edwards participated by telephone in a school meeting where tutoring and services were discussed, according to the report, but no commitment was made to return Strong to school.

Concern intensified again on Feb. 12, when Strong’s maternal grandfather contacted child welfare officials and said he had not seen the teenager since October, Disability Rights Oregon reported. The grandfather also raised concerns about Edwards and said she had not been seen at work for several weeks. State workers went to the home that day but received no response, according to the review. Six days later, officials obtained the court order authorizing them to take Strong into protective custody. By then, the independent report concluded, he had likely already been dead for weeks.

The initial criminal case looked different from the final convictions. Local reporting based on Lake County Circuit Court records said Edwards and Cullins initially faced criminally negligent homicide, second-degree abuse of a corpse and first-degree criminal mistreatment after the discovery of Strong’s body, with Cullins also accused at that stage of unlawful use of a weapon. The charges later became substantially more serious as the investigation developed. By July 2026, the Oregon Department of Justice announced that Cullins had been convicted of first-degree murder and Edwards of murder by abuse, along with the corpse-abuse and mistreatment offenses for each defendant.

Oregon State Police led the criminal investigation with assistance from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. At the request of the Lake County district attorney, attorneys from the Oregon Department of Justice Criminal Justice Division served as lead prosecutors. The state identified Senior Assistant Attorneys General Dan Wendel and Jayme Kimberly and Assistant Attorney General Elise Josephson as the prosecutors handling the case with support from the local district attorney’s office. The Justice Department did not provide a detailed account in its sentencing announcement of what each defendant said in court or the precise conduct assigned to each conviction, limiting its public summary to the crimes, evidence, sentences and circumstances surrounding Strong’s death.

The sentencing also brought attention back to Strong as a student and community member rather than only as the victim of a criminal case. His obituary says he was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, before moving with his family to Texas and later to Lakeview. At Lakeview High School, he enjoyed art and drawing and also liked cooking class. He was known for making paper ties, pulling a red wagon around town, building with Lego bricks, fishing, camping and telling jokes. At sentencing, the Justice Department said family members and community members remembered how he made green paper ties for other people and made friends around Lakeview.

Teacher DeNae Bauer told Oregon Public Broadcasting that Strong was a student who remained in the thoughts of people who had taught him. Disability Rights Oregon’s report described school staff as persistent advocates who continued trying to bring attention to his situation after he was removed from classes. That history has made Strong’s absence from school a central part of the case: school had provided regular contact with educators and others who could observe his well-being, and that contact stopped months before authorities entered his home. The Justice Department said he would have graduated with Lakeview High School’s class of 2026.

Disability Rights Oregon used Strong’s case to call for broad changes in the state’s child protective system. Among its recommendations were clearer standards for deciding when hotline reports should be investigated, regular direct contact with children in open cases, required safety planning when credible threats are identified and better coordination with developmental disability services. The group also criticized Oregon’s Critical Incident Review Team process, which is used to examine certain child deaths involving recent child welfare contact, and called for greater independence, transparency and follow-up when those reviews recommend changes.

The advocacy organization’s conclusions represent its assessment of the child welfare response, rather than findings in the criminal convictions against Edwards and Cullins. The Oregon Department of Justice, however, independently confirmed that the Department of Human Services had received concerns before Strong’s death, that school and state employees tried to arrange services and that a protective custody order was not obtained until Feb. 18, 2025. Those undisputed points have left two connected records: a criminal case that ended with life sentences and an institutional record that continues to raise questions about whether earlier intervention could have changed the outcome.

Edwards must serve at least 25 years before becoming eligible for parole consideration, while Cullins must serve at least 35 years. Those minimum terms do not guarantee release. With the criminal sentencing complete, Strong’s death remains part of a broader examination of Oregon’s response to reports involving vulnerable children, while the community that knew him entered the 2026 graduation year without the student who had once been expected to cross the stage with his classmates.

Author note: Last updated September 8, 2026.