He Was 7, Brutally Burned and Beaten. His Mother Tried to Save Him — But No One Came

He beat his son until the child couldn’t see. He burned him in a bathtub. He left him to die. Now, Murtadah Mohammad will spend at least 45 years behind bars for the murder of 7-year-old Jaevion Riley.

Mohammad, 27, was sentenced on Tuesday, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. He pleaded guilty in April to reckless second-degree murder and falsifying physical evidence in the death of his son, per an agency press release.

Jaevion sustained a skull fracture, a dislodged tooth and third-degree burns to 15 percent of his body over the course of five days before his death in January 2023, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader, WMUR and NBC10 Boston. 

Judge William Delker called Mohammad’s crimes a “sustained campaign of abuse” at the father’s Tuesday sentencing. “He would have had to fight for his life when he was exposed to boiling water,” Delker said, according to the Union Leader.

Prosecutor Peter Hinckley previously said at an earlier hearing that the burn injuries were consistent with the boy being forcibly immersed in scalding water, per the outlets.

He also told jurors that Mohammad waited 12 hours to call for help, leaving the boy in “prolonged anguish that the child endured hour after hour after hour until his young body just gave out on him.”

“He must have screamed his heart out when you whipped and beat him, and none of that deterred you,” Delker said. “You left him to suffer and ultimately die without seeking help… I think we can only hope that at some point he lost consciousness and didn’t experience the pain for the full 12 or more hours that these crimes occurred.”

Emergency medical personnel responded to a report of a child in distress at the family’s home on Jan. 17 2023, according to the attorney general’s office. Mohammad staged a spill that he claimed caused his son’s catastrophic scalding injuries, according to the outlets.

The child’s mother, Rainah Riley, told NBC10 Boston that her son was in a coma before he died. Mohammad had been granted joint custody of the child in the months before the incident; she said she tried to report signs of abuse, like bruising, to the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families to no avail. 

“It’s absolutely gruesome, it is horrific, and it is sickening to look at,” she told the outlet before her son passed away. “It makes me physically ill looking at my own son because of what this man did to him.”

“Nobody did anything,” she said of her calls to child protective services. “The system has failed not only my child, but so many children. And something needs to be done, because this isn’t OK. It’s not. Like, when is enough enough?”

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A spokesperson from New Hampshire’s DCYF, when asked about the mother’s claims, told PEOPLE that the agency is required by law to safeguard the confidentiality of children and their caregivers. 

Mohammad apologized to the boy’s mother in court on Tuesday: 

“I take full responsibility for the death of my son, Jaevion,” Mohammad said. “I should never have been using drugs and alcohol. That led to the decisions I made and ultimately led to my son’s death.”

But Delker remained unconvinced:

“Even now, even when your future depends on it, you haven’t been able to bring yourself to acknowledge the full scope of what you did to that child, the full magnitude of what you did,” he said, per the Union Leader.

During sentencing, the boy’s mother was doubled over weeping, per photos from the outlet, and did not give a planned victim impact statement.