A New Hampshire man has been hit with a murder charge after his 7-year-old son died with severe burns the dad allegedly inflicted as discipline.
Murtadah Mohammad, 25, was charged with second-degree murder of his son Jaevion Riley months after his tragic Jan. 24 death, the Manchester Police announced Monday.
Mohammad had already been locked up on charges of assault, endangering the welfare of a child and falsifying physical evidence for the same case.
But those charges — which are currently being handled by the Hillsborough County Attorney’s Office — are expected to be dropped, with the murder charge to be prosecuted by the state Attorney General’s office, officials said.
When cops were called on Jan. 17 to a Manchester apartment, they found the boy badly burned on his face and body and unconscious and not breathing, according to a report by NBC Boston.
Jaevion would remain in a coma for a week in a Massachusetts hospital before he died.
The dad — who was arrested two days later on Jan. 19 — initially claimed he didn’t see his son get hurt as the child had been in the shower at the time but investigators didn’t find signs that the shower had been run recently.
Following other inconsistencies in Mohammad’s story, he eventually admitted to police that he disciplined the boy using hot water and physical force, the outlet reported citing the dad’s affidavit.
The child’s mother Rainah Riley told the news site in January, “This man was trying to kill my child.”
The mom said her son’s injuries looked like they were “from boiling water or oil,” or the child may have been “set on fire.”
She said one of the boy’s teeth had been knocked out and he had a head injury.
“It is absolutely gruesome, it is horrific, and it is sickening to look at,” the mom said. “It makes me physically ill looking at my own son because of what this man did to him.”
Mohammad “caused the death” of Jaevion “recklessly under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to the value of his life by subjecting him to abusive violence and not obtaining timely medical assistance for his injuries,” the Manchester Police wrote on Monday.
Mohammad had only won shared custody of Jaevion a few months prior to the death and Riley had reported to child services signs of abuse, including bruising.
But Riley said the agency failed to intervene.
“The system has failed not only my child, but so many children,” the mom said. “And something needs to be done, because this isn’t OK. It’s not. Like, when is enough enough?”
