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Westchester County District Attorney Anthony Scarpino, Jr. announced on Wednesday that Blair Robinson, 27, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to first-degree manslaughter, a violent felony.
According to police, at approximately 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve, officers were sent to St. John’s Riverside Hospital, when Blair brought in a boy who was in an “unresponsive state,” with noticeable bruises on his body. Hospital personnel was unable to ever revive the child and he was pronounced dead at 9:25 p.m.
The circumstance led to a police investigation, Scarpino said. When officers responded to investigate the victim’s home following the 2-year-old’s death, they discovered the victim’s mother and a 10-month-old child in a bedroom laying on a cold mattress with no sheets and a bottle of curdled milk next to her.
Scarpino noted that the child was dirty and suffering from diaper rash. The apartment was “filthy and unsanitary and rodent droppings were all over kitchen surfaces." Police also reported that there were bugs flying inside the refrigerator.
The 10-month-old was sent to the Westchester Medical Center for follow-up treatment and both parents were interviewed by police, with Robinson “minimizing his conduct,” stating that he only struck the child once in the buttocks, officials said.
Following an autopsy, the Westchester County Medical Examiner determined that the death was due to “blunt force trauma.” The 2-year-old had hemorrhages in his brain and internal organs. Scarpino said that there were approximately nine marks on his back that appeared to have been “pattern injuries caused by some kind of instrument he had been repeatedly struck with.”
According to police, during a second investigation, Robinson admitted that he had kicked, whipped and beaten the child on the day of his death before taking a work and going to work for approximately 90 minutes. Only then did he return to their Maple Avenue home to retrieve his son to bring him to the emergency room.
The child's mother, Kenya Reed, was sentenced to shock probation in September after pleading guilty to endangering the welfare of a child.
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