A Montgomery County man was convicted of attempted murder for abusing his 8-week-old son

A Bridgeport man was convicted Wednesday of attempted murder for causing what prosecutors described as catastrophic injuries to his newborn son.

Daniel Rohloff, 35, was also found guilty of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, and related crimes after a two-day bench trial before Montgomery County Court Judge Thomas P. Rogers.

In July 2021, prosecutors say, Rohloff and his fianceé took their 8-week-old baby to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where doctors found that he had severe injuries to multiple organ systems, rib fractures — both new and healing — as well as bruising and lacerations to his liver.

Those injuries were likely deliberate, doctors said, the result of someone shaking, squeezing, and hitting the child.

» READ MORE: Montgomery County man is charged with attempted murder in the beating of his 2-month-old son

Investigators later discovered that there were surveillance cameras in the home installed by Rohloff, and uncovered footage of Rohloff carrying his son into a bedroom before covering the camera’s lens with a cloth. Immediately afterward, they said, the child could be heard wailing.

Detectives also learned that the county’s Office of Children and Youth had assigned a caseworker to the family after Rohloff had exhibited strange, erratic behavior while the child’s mother was in labor. He was barred from the hospital, they said, and was not present for his son’s birth.

County officials created a safety plan for the family that prevented Rohloff from being alone with the child. But prosecutors presented evidence that he was frequently the baby’s sole caretaker and could have inflicted the injuries doctors later observed.

Assistant District Attorney Brianna Ringwood said Rohloff, an admitted methamphetamine user, didn’t believe the child was his, and saw the boy as the source of his life’s problems.

“He was the only person in that house who had a motive to see harm done to that child,” Ringwood said. “He had a desire, above all else, to use meth, and this child was the source of all this sudden attention on him.”

Rohloff’s lawyer, Frank Genovese, disputed this. He said that although it was clear the boy had been abused, the prosecution was relying purely on circumstantial evidence to link his client to those injuries.

“The critical inquiry of this case lies in regard to reasonable doubt,” Genovese said. “And I think the evidence falls woefully short of a specific intent to kill.”

Rohloff, for his part, vehemently denied abusing his son and said the boy “brought joy” to him and his fianceé. He said he had covered the bedroom cameras because he had been looking for narcotics he had stashed in the room.

Ringwood, in her closing argument Tuesday afternoon, pointed to what she described as Rohloff’s unstable behavior in the days before the infant’s injuries to cast doubt on his testimony.

Hours before Rohloff and his fianceé brought their son to CHOP, she said, the couple had an argument, after which the child’s mother fled the home and confided in friends that she wanted to get a protection-from-abuse order against him. In an attempt to have her return to the home, Ringwood said, Rohloff texted her, saying the baby was having a seizure.

He later admitted that was a lie, according to Ringwood.

“He doesn’t care about the child’s physical condition,” she said. “He’s using him to manipulate people to get his way.”

In delivering his verdict, Rogers, the judge, said he did not find Rohloff’s testimony credible.

Rohloff was taken into custody afterward. He will be sentenced in the coming days.