A man in New Jersey who fatally punched his girlfriend's toddler daughter when the
child wouldn't let him comb her hair after a bath has been sentenced to
30 years in prison.
Hudson County prosecutors say Reinaldo Rodriguez hit the 2-year-old so
hard that he
lacerated her liver. He pleaded guilty to murder in
January.
The Jersey Journal reports the 27-year-old Bayonne man
was babysitting the child at his girlfriend's Jersey City home in May
2014. Authorities went there after a 911 caller reported the child was
barely breathing.
She was pronounced dead a short time later at a hospital.
When he sentenced Rodriguez on Friday, state Superior Court Judge John
Young told him that "wild animals care more about their young" than
Rodriguez did for the 2-year-old that day.
