A 27-year-old father in Missouri has been sentenced to spend several decades in prison for the tragic killing of his 4-year-old child. He had recently regained custody of the child after previously “crushing” the newborn’s head with his hands.

On Thursday, St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Kristine A. Kerr sentenced Blake Dopirak to 24 years in a state correctional facility for the 2022 killing of young Zaydian Dopirak, as shown in records reviewed by Law&Crime.

Per court documents, Dopirak agreed to plead guilty earlier this month to one count of endangering the welfare of a child leading to death, in connection with the tragic death of his son.

Emergency medical personnel and officers with the St. Louis Police Department at about 8 a.m. on Jan . 2, 2022, responded to a call regarding an unresponsive child at a residence in the 1600 block of Huntington Hill Drive in Manchester, St. Louis NBC affiliate KSDK reported. Blake Dopirak reportedly called 911 and told the emergency dispatcher that his son had suddenly stopped breathing.

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Upon arriving at the scene, first responders rushed the boy to a local hospital for treatment. He was pronounced dead one day after arriving at the facility.

A subsequent autopsy reportedly determined that the boy’s manner of death was a homicide and the cause of death was “non-accidental closed head trauma.” Court documents reportedly state Blake Dopirak confirmed to police that he was the sole adult with the child at the time that his son became unresponsive.

Authorities noted it was not the first time Zaydian had been critically injured. In 2018 — when he was only 5 weeks old — the boy had also been hospitalized due to physical abuse at the hands of his father, resulting in the boy being placed in the care of a foster family.

In an interview with St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI, Zaydian’s foster parents said they took custody of him after he was severely injured by Blake Dopirak.

According to the report, Zaydian was placed in the care of the foster parents when the boy was about 4 months old because about five weeks after his birth, the newborn suffered a “non-accidental traumatic brain injury” from abuse by his father. One of the foster parents told the station that Zaydian’s skull had been “crushed by hand.”

The foster parents also heavily criticized the state for allowing the child to be returned to the care of his father. They told KTVI that they had highlighted numerous reasons why doing so would put Zaydian in danger, including providing testimony from a social worker, a pediatrician, and a guardian ad litem (a person appointed by a court to represent the best interests of a child during legal proceedings) about Blake Dopirak.

“When you have so many people telling you that if this child is returned home, he will be killed, you need to listen to that,” Zaydian’s foster mother told the station. “We were shocked when the judge said she was going to do a trial reunification.”