A Minnesota man faces murder charges after prosecutors say he intentionally dropped his 5-month-old son head first on the ground, which caused his son to ultimately die from the trauma, according to reports.
The man, Matthew Christian Hoisser, 36, also allegedly told investigators that he had intentionally dropped his little boy because the baby was being “difficult.”
Hoisser, of Woodbury, was arrested and charged on Aug. 9 with two counts of second-degree murder related to the death of his baby, Gus, which occurred in April.
If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.
Doctors said after seeing the CT scan that the injury to the boy’s head was so severe that, had he lived he would have been permanently blind and incapacitated, the criminal complaint said.
Five days later, Gus died at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis.
The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma.
“He loved riding on his daddy’s shoulder and hearing his mommy sing, especially ‘Rainbow Connection,’ and will always remain their precious ‘Snuggamonkey.’”
A memorial service for Gus was held on June 1.
Court records say that Hoisser told authorities that he was taking care of Gus late on April 24 and was having trouble getting his baby to sleep.
The record said that Gus “was crying and fussy and was being ‘difficult,’ ... at one point, [Hoisser] was so frustrated he dropped the infant head first to the ground ... intentionally causing him to strike his head on the floor stunning [the baby] and causing him to continue to cry.”
During the baby’s autopsy, the medical examiner discovered that Gus had also sustained another head injury about two weeks prior to his death. Hoisser informed the police that he had caused that injury while he was changing Gus’s diaper. He said he laid his baby on the part of the floor with no carpet, and that Gus’s head had “hit the floor hard enough” for him to have recalled the event.
The criminal complaint continued “[The baby] was startled by the contact between his head and the floor. The defendant admitted that there were times that he was short with [the baby] and that he was not always ‘super gentle’ with the infant. He said [his son] was a difficult baby that had colic and was consistently fussy.”
Around April 12, possibly the time of Gus’s previous head injury his mother and the childcare provider had noted that Gus had “unusual difficulty with feeding.” The daycare provider also said that Gus was “screaming loudly and was inconsolable,” the report said.
After Hoisser’s arrest on August 9, bail was set at $350,000 with conditions, which included no drug or alcohol use and remaining law-abiding. Hoisser’s wife, Nicole, is ten weeks pregnant with their unborn child. Hoisser is due to appear at the next hearing on the charges on August 19.
