Fridley man sentenced to 25 years in prison for death of five-month-old son

FRIDLEY, Minnesota — A 24-year-old Fridley man was sentenced to over 25 years in prison on Monday for Death of his child son early last year.

Aaron Rathke was convicted of first-degree murder in May.

According to court documents, Rathke brought his child, Kaiden Rathke, to the Fridley Police Department on March 1, 2023, after the boy stopped breathing. The boy had no pulse and later died at the hospital.

Rathke told officers he came home from work and was changing his child’s diaper when the child began vomiting and stopped breathing. Rathke said he then pushed on his baby’s chest, but was unable to get him to start breathing again.

Documents show that Rathke said the child’s mother called him earlier in the day and told him his child had rolled his eyes and stopped breathing. Rathke said when his girlfriend pressed on the baby’s chest, he started breathing again.

He said he did not call an ambulance because there had been previous incidents involving the baby where he could be “brought back.” He added that the baby sometimes “forgot to breathe.”

A few days later, he made another statement to authorities, in which he said he sometimes hugged his child “a little too tightly,” but denied ever dropping the baby or bumping into anything.

The child’s mother said in a statement that the baby stopped breathing around noon that day. When she sat up and pressed on his chest, he started breathing again.

In August, the child’s mother told police that Rathke had killed her child. In late September, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner determined that the baby’s cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma and that the manner of death was homicide.

In October, the child’s mother told authorities she was initially afraid to reveal herself because of Rathke’s abuse of her, the indictment says. She said Rathke put her child to sleep by applying pressure to his neck, causing him to become unconscious. She added that she saw Rathke “strangle” her baby when he was three months old.

Rathke was sentenced to 306 months in prison, with 256 days of time already served being credited to him.

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