A 27-year-old father in Missouri will spend several decades in prison for killing his 4-year-old child, whom he had only recently regained custody after having previously “crushed” the then-newborn’s head with his bare hands.
St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Kristine A. Kerr on Thursday ordered Blake Dopirak to serve 24 years in a state correctional facility for the 2022 slaying of young Zaydian Dopirak, according to records reviewed by Law&Crime
According to court records, Dopirak agreed earlier this month to plead guilty to one count of endangering a child’s welfare, which resulted in death, in connection with his son’s tragic death.
On January 2, 2022, around 8 a.m., emergency medical personnel and officers from the St. Louis Police Department responded to a call about 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 informed the dispatcher that his son had suddenly stopped breathing.
When first responders arrived at the scene, they rushed the boy to a nearby hospital for treatment. He was pronounced dead just one day after arriving at the facility.
A subsequent autopsy reportedly determined that the boy died as a result of homicide, with “non-accidental closed head trauma.” According to court documents, Blake Dopirak told police that he was the only adult present when his son became unresponsive.
Authorities noted that this was not Zaydian’s first critical injury. In 2018, when he was only 5 weeks old, the boy was hospitalized due to physical abuse at the hands of his father, and he was placed in the care of a foster family.
Zaydian’s foster parents told St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI that they took custody of him after he was severely injured by Blake Dopirak.
According to the report, Zaydian was placed in the care of foster parents when he was about 4 months old after suffering a “non-accidental traumatic brain injury” from his father’s abuse five weeks after birth. One of the foster parents informed 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 his father’s custody. They told KTVI that they had presented numerous reasons why doing so would endanger Zaydian, including testimony from a social worker, a pediatrician, and a guardian ad litem (a person appointed by a court to represent a child’s best interests 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.”
