City man to serve 7 years for beating infant
5-month old spent 2 months in hospital recovering from serious injuries
WOONSOCKET — A Superior Court judge sentenced a city man to seven years in prison Tuesday for beating a 5-month-old child in his care last year, causing serious injuries to the infant.
Kristofer Bernier was sentenced to 15 years in all, with seven to serve at the Adult Correctional Institutions and the balance suspended, with probation. Associate Superior Court Judge Kristin E. Rodgers also ordered Bernier to have no contact with the victim upon his release.
Rodgers sentenced Bernier after he pleaded no contest to two counts of second-degree child abuse in connection with the March 26, 2017, assault on the child, said Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter Kilmartin.
Had the case proceeded to trial, she said, prosecutors would have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Bernier committed the crime.
According to information provided by Kilmartin and police, investigators and rescue personnel learned of the case after responding to a call that a young child had fallen off a couch in an apartment on East Avenue, suffering facial injuries. The child’s aunt had placed the call after Bernier contacted her about the child’s injuries.
Upon arrival, first responders discovered that the boy was unresponsive and had somehow suffered a number of facial lacerations. After initially being transported to Landmark
Medical Center, the child was transferred to Hasbro Children’s Hospital.
When police questioned Bernier, he told he had been babysitting the child for the couple’s parents – friends of his – and that the child had injured himself by falling off a sofa.
But Bernier later changed his story, telling investigators that he’d “lost it” after the child would not stop crying. Bernier admitted to police that he struck the child several times with an open hand, dropped the child on the corner of a coffee table and then on the floor.
Kempe said the child suffered a fractured skull, intra-retinal hemorrhages, a subdural hematoma and multiple bruises on his head, face and other parts of his body. The child spent approximately two months in the hospital recovering from his injuries.
As The Call reported previously, based on interviews with family members, Bernier was living with the parents of the child at the time of the incident, after they’d taken him in to prevent him from becoming homeless.
According to the judiciary’s web site, Bernier is still facing unrelated charges of second-degree child abuse stemming from an incident involving another child that occurred in 2012.
Woonsocket Police Detectives James Chamberland and Anthony Conetta Jr. led the investigation that resulted in Bernier’s conviction. State prosecutors James Smith and Jillian Dubois handled the case for Kilmartin’s office.