Jared Billette has admitted to killing 9-month-old Milo Doxey while baby-sitting, but his version of how it happened doesn't match the child's injuries, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Billette, 23, said he was swinging the baby around, playing with him, when his head hit a hard surface. But Milo suffered swelling and bleeding of the brain, not a skull fracture -- injuries similar to those of a forcefully shaken baby, said Deputy Salt Lake County Attorney Rob Parrish.
"This was not just a tragic accident," he said.
But during a sentencing hearing, Billette insisted that he had told the truth.
"He was not crying. I was not trying to silence him. I was just trying to interact with him," a tearful Billette said, adding that Milo was the youngest child he had ever played with. "Looking back on it now, I was a little more forceful than need be."
He tried to turn to face the baby's mother, Samantha Hanson, to express his remorse, but she shook her head and he turned away.
Judge Mark Kouris sentenced him to the harshest penalty possible -- five years to life in prison.
"I don't believe a word you're saying about what happened here," Kouris said. The injuries are those suffered to someone when a car going 142 mph suddenly stops, he said.
Billette pleaded guilty in December to first-degree felony child abuse homicide. In an emotional hearing that left even Billette's defense attorney in tears, the baby's mother said she is still devastated by her loss.
"My son Milo was my everything, the only reason I got out of bed in the morning ... Not a single night passes that I don't cry myself to sleep," Samantha Hanson wrote. He was going to be a baby lobster for Halloween, she said. "I will never get to see his first steps or hear him say, 'Mommy, I love you.'"
Kouris also ordered Billette to pay restitution, including $7,000 he has already paid and any additional cost of counseling for Hanson.
Milo died on Oct. 7, after Hanson dropped him off with Billette and his girlfriend, Brianna Cottrell, about 3:30 a.m. Cottrell, a friend who sometimes baby-sat for Hanson, 22, left for work about five hours later. When Cottrell called Billette about 11:15 a.m., he told her the baby was unresponsive.
Milo was flown to a hospital, where he died. A pediatric neurosurgeon who operated on him called his injuries "the worst case of an inflicted brain trauma in a child," he had ever seen, according to charging documents.
