Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

The 12-year-old boy killed by a fallen tree at Howell Nature Center has been identified as Declan Carter, the son of Northville City Councilman John Carter.

"As a parent you send your kid off on a field trip and you just expect everything is going to go the way it's supposed to go, and they're home the next day or later that day," Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy told WHMI's Morning Drive with Chuck and Madison.

"Our heart breaks for not just the community, but obviously the family, the nature center, the public safety responders who responded yesterday, and parents that can imagine themselves in this position. It's not supposed to happen this way."

Carter, a sixth grader at Our Lady of Victory School in Northville, was on an overnight field trip to the nature center with fellow students when the dead tree reportedly fell on him. He was pronounced dead at Mott's Children Hospital in Ann Arbor Thursday evening.

Northville Mayor Brian Turnbull posted a letter to the community saying Declan Carter had his whole life ahead of him and that "everyone did all they could for Declan, but his energetic life was suddenly halted."

"I had the pleasure of knowing Declan, having visited with him and his sister, Georgia, in front of their home many times, especially on hot summer afternoons for a lemonade. He had great potential academically, athletically (as one of the top runners in the area) and socially as a part of the fabric and DNA of Northville," said Mayor Turnbull in the letter linked below.