Police in Rockford, Illinois say a 27-year-old man had to pause his video game early one morning to check on his crying baby, and hours later that infant was dead from blunt force trauma that included two skull fractures on separate parts of the head, several broken ribs and a fractured femur.
Jaden Hearns faces first-degree murder, aggravated domestic battery and aggravated battery to a child charges in the death of his son.
Officers were called around 8 a.m. Sunday, April 26th, for an unresponsive 7-month-old boy in cardiac arrest. Paramedics took the child to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead about half an hour later, police said. Hearns was the only adult with the baby that night. The child’s mother had dropped him off the evening before and left to spend time with friends
Detectives later questioned Hearns at the scene. He first told them he did not know how the baby got hurt. In a follow-up interview he said he had been playing video games around 3:45 a.m. when he heard the infant crying and that he stopped gaming to take care of him. Hearns added that he has a poor memory and loses track of time, records show. His account changed several times during questioning, according to WIFR’s reporting on the court file.
Court papers note that Hearns was already on pretrial release in a separate 2025 felony domestic battery case in which he is accused of strangling her while she was pregnant with this same child. A judge ordered him in November 2025 not to have contact with her. That order was violated when the mother left the baby with him April 25th, police and prosecutors said.
The baby’s mother is not accused of any crime.
