Prison ordered for Wichita man who killed baby. ‘He should never be out,’ family says

Maela Flores was a beautiful baby who smiled all of the time.

She had so many years ahead of her, her family said.

But there was no first birthday party. She only had one Christmas. She won’t ever go to school.

And no one will know the woman she might have become because her life was cut short four years ago — the victim of deadly child abuse by her mother’s then-boyfriend.

On Thursday, Maela’s grandmother was adamant a life sentence was the right punishment for the man who murdered her, Brietan Rader.

She said as much to the Sedgwick County District judge who sentenced Rader for Maela’s death and other crimes, including child abuse.

“He hurts children, babies and family. He should never be out,” Mae McKinney said.

“He should be in prison for the rest of his life.”

Rader, 29, of Wichita, was charged with killing the 9-month-old girl after medical staff determined she suffered fatal injuries consistent with being shaken on Jan. 10, 2020, including broken ribs and bleeding in her brain and eyes. Wichita police have said Rader hurt Maela while watching her at his west Wichita apartment in the 3600 block of west 13th Street — where he was also growing marijuana — so her mother could go to work. He claimed he woke up, saw Maela with blood in her mouth and thought she was having a seizure, court records say.

Maela died at the hospital on Jan. 15, 2020, from blunt force injuries to her head and neck, according to her autopsy report.

Rader pleaded guilty on Nov. 30 to second-degree murder, two counts of child abuse and one count each of cultivating marijuana and possessing drug paraphernalia for distribution. Prosecutors alleged Rader abused Maela, who also had healing fractures on her legs, for as many as six weeks before her death, court records show.

On Thursday, Judge Tyler Roush sentenced Rader to 25 years, eight months in prison, about three years of which he’s already served waiting for the case to resolve. Roush also ordered Rader to pay $2,967.80 in restitution to the Kansas Crime Victims Compensation Board to reimburse it for expenses related to Maela’s death.

Before imposing the sentence, Roush listened for several minutes while Maela’s family, who wore matching T-shirts with her photo on the front and angel wings on the back, sobbed and described their pain.

McKinney said she felt “a lot of guilt” because she was supposed to babysit Maela the night she was fatally injured, “but it didn’t work out.”

Her daughter, Bailey Hartzog, had Rader do it instead.

Hartzog reassured her Maela would “be OK,” McKinney told the judge.

Later that night, her daughter called with terrible news.

“Out of jealousy or anger, her life was taken,” McKinney said.

Hartzog told the judge she had always wanted to be a mom and had trusted Rader to care for Maela when she asked him to babysit.

She didn’t expect her daughter would be hurt, let alone killed.

Now she has to explain to her 6-year-old son “why his little sister will never be more than a baby,” she said.

“It’s a whole life that she’ll never get to live,” Hartzog said.

Despite the family’s calls for a life sentence, Rader didn’t receive one. He couldn’t.

Kansas law doesn’t allow it for the crimes he pleaded guilty to.

The judge acknowledged that fact before he sent Rader to prison for more than 25 years.

The sentence in no way minimizes what happened to Maela, Roush assured her family.

Litigating court cases can be a “cold, hard” business that involves plea deals, agreements that are important to honor for the ongoing administration of justice when their recommendations are fair, Roush explained.

Those deals sometimes let defendants admit to lesser crimes than they were originally charged with, and sometimes families aren’t happy with the resulting sentence, he acknowledged. Rader was initially charged with first-degree felony murder in Maela’s death — a crime that would have landed him in prison for life had he been convicted of it.

But the same plea deals also spare victims and their families from reliving their trauma at a trial, the judge said. And they ensure a defendant is convicted of something rather than leaving the decision up to jurors who might not see evidence the same way as prosecutors. Child homicide cases in particular sometimes have physical evidence and circumstances that make it difficult to ascertain exactly what happened, he told them.

Sedgwick County Assistant District Attorney Alice Osburn and defense lawyer Mark Schoenhofer both asked Roush to follow their recommendation for a 308-month sentence in the plea agreement, which Schoenhofer said had been “worked out over months, or certainly several weeks.”

Most of that time, 15 1/2 years, is punishment for Maela’s death. More than 6 years is for child abuse. The rest is connected to drugs.

When it was his turn to address the court, Rader stood and gave a short speech that included comments about “doing the right thing” and how he had strengthened his relationship with his dad while he was in jail.

He also briefly apologized.

But Maela’s family didn’t buy it.

“I don’t think it was an accident. Matter of fact, I know it’s not. It was done on purpose for whatever reason,” Maela’s grandmother told the judge.

She turned toward Rader and seethed: “You took this little girl from us. You have no remorse.”