A Montgomery County man admitted to killing his 6-week-old son and was sentenced to state prison

A Montgomery County man was sentenced to eight to 16 years in state prison Wednesday after admitting he killed his infant son in a fit of frustration last year.

David Moyer, 25, of Trappe, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child during a brief hearing before Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter. Moyer’s 6-week-old son, Vladimir, died in February 2022 from what doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia later ruled to be blunt-force trauma.

The boy’s ribs had been broken, and he had suffered hemorrhaging to his orbital socket and spinal cord, according to Assistant District Attorney Lauren Marvel. Moyer told police that he had dropped the baby onto a mattress in anger after the boy threw up on him.

But Marvel said she doubted the truthfulness of that statement: The injuries were too severe to have been inflicted that way, she said.

» READ MORE: A Montgomery County man is charged with murder in the death of his 6-week-old son

“It is a tragedy, and it’s unfortunate that the physical abuse of infants is incredibly hard to investigate and hard to prove, because these small babies can’t speak for themselves,” she said. “This is a horrible and heartbreaking loss of life of a little boy who never got the chance to be older than 2 months.”

Moyer’s attorney, James Lyons, said after Wednesday’s hearing that his client was “extremely remorseful” for what he called a terrible accident.

Moyer, a native of Ukraine, spent the first 10 years of his life in an orphanage in Crimea that Lyons characterized as abusive and neglectful. As a result, Lyons said, Moyer suffers from PTSD and bipolar disorder.

“This situation did not happen in a vacuum,” he said. “There’s a direct correlation between what happened here and the way [Moyer] was raised and the damage done to him.”

Moyer and his wife took their son to Phoenixville Hospital on Feb. 20, 2022, telling staff there that the child was unresponsive and lethargic. The boy’s injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to CHOP, where he died days later, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Moyer’s arrest.

Initially, Moyer said he had been caring for the baby while his wife was downstairs, and had left him alone briefly to prepare a bottle for him, according to the affidavit. When Moyer returned, he said, the infant had rolled onto his side and was unresponsive when Moyer picked him up.

During a second interview with detectives, after his son’s autopsy, Moyer admitted he lied. He explained to the officers that he had slammed the baby facedown onto a mattress and left him there. When he came back to the room 20 minutes later, he said, the child wasn’t breathing.

Moyer told detectives he didn’t realize the extent of his actions until much later because “it all happened too fast and too quick,” the affidavit said.