AURORA | An Aurora man who fatally head-butted his infant son in 2013 has been sentenced to 26 years in prison, prosecutors said Thursday, July 7.
Martin Holguin Jr., 26, pleaded guilty in 2015 to child abuse resulting in death in connection with the September 2013 death of his 3-month-old son, Aiden.
Holguin later tried to change his plea to not guilty, arguing that his initial lawyers were ineffective, but after a year of litigation a judge rejected the change, said Sue Lindsay, a spokeswoman for the Adams County District Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors announced Thursday that Holguin had been sentenced to 26 years behind bars.
“Aiden had his whole life ahead of him, and now we will never know what potential he held and what he would have become. These cases are the most sad and tragic cases that we prosecute,” District Attorney Dave Young said in a statement.
According to testimony from police and prosecutors at a hearing in 2014, Holguin admitted to head butting his son, but said he didn’t realize the blow could be fatal.
In an arrest affidavit filed against Holguin in 2013, police said officers responded to the home Sept. 15, 2013, on a report of an unresponsive infant. There, emergency crews found the tot unconscious and rushed him to nearby Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Hospital staff later discovered a Y-shaped fracture on the boy’s skull just above his ear and said he suffered severe head trauma.
Initially, Holguin told investigators that he had no idea what could have happened to the boy. He told police Aiden had been fussy for a few days and was sitting in a bouncy chair in the living room when he suddenly had what looked like a seizure.
A day after Aiden was rushed to the hospital, Holguin seemed angry when police asked him if he struck his son and went on to tell police that the boy’s injuries may have been the result of the baby accidentally hitting his head on Holguin’s a few days earlier, or the boy accidentally hitting his head on a door jam.
Police spoke to medical experts who said it wasn’t possible for the boy’s injuries to have been caused the way his dad said they were.
Police interviewed Holguin again a few weeks later and he told them he head-butted Aiden, but he insisted it wasn’t intended to hurt the boy and he didn’t know it could be fatal.
Holguin has been behind bars since he was arrested a few weeks after his son’s death.