A mother in Minnesota is heading to prison for murdering her 23-month-old son by slamming his head repeatedly into a bedroom wall and then lying to police about what happened, claiming he was run over by his father — who happened to have his car in the shop at the time.

“She took my baby’s life,” said Robert Ortez, father of Aaryan, who was killed by his mom Larena Jackson in August 2023. “I still don’t know, to this day, what really happened because she isn’t saying anything,” Ortez told Valley News Live. “I’m still trying to figure out why she did it. I don’t know why[.]”

Criminal charges against a 30-year-old nurse in New York accused of “violently slamming” a newborn baby face-down into a bassinet in the neonatal intensive care unit have been dropped just hours before she was scheduled to go to trial on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

Suffolk County District Court Judge Eric Sachs on Monday formally dismissed the misdemeanor charge against Amanda Burke, her attorney confirmed to Law&Crime.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office had previously said that Burke was working at Good Samaritan Hospital’s neonatal ICU on Feb. 6, 2023, and was assigned to care for a 2-day-old baby named Nikko.

While the windows in the neonatal ICU are typically covered for privacy reasons, the covering on the bottom corner of one of the windows had come off, allowing someone outside of the unit to look in and see baby Nikko. The child’s father was recording a video of his son when the incident took place.

“Burke approached the newborn while he was lying in a bassinet, lifted him up, quickly flipped him over, and violently slammed him face down on the bassinet,” prosecutors wrote. “The infant’s father recorded a video of the incident on his cellular telephone through the nursery window. After viewing the recording, the infant’s mother confronted Burke.”

The child’s parents then showed the video of Burke slamming their child into the bassinet to other nurses and staff members at the hospital. Authorities say that the establishment took swift action, directing Burke to leave the hospital and terminating her employment within two hours of the alleged incident taking place.

Burke’s attorney, Robert C. Gottlieb, told Law&Crime that the dismissal of the charge was welcome, but came “a year too late.”