Mom flashing lights at cop leads Wichita police to arrest boyfriend in child abuse case

A mother who flashed her lights at a cop driving home led Wichita police to arrest the woman’s boyfriend at an apartment where he is accused of abusing her child amid a marijuana-growing operation.

Brietan Ron Rader, 25, was arrested after Wichita police were called at around 11:20 p.m. on Friday to a home in the 3600 block of West 13th Street.

“There was a sheriff lieutenant on his way home, and she (the mother) had flashed her lights at him to get him to stop, because Mr. Rader had called her and told her that the child was not breathing,” police Capt. Brent Allred said Monday.

The cop followed her home, and more emergency personnel were called, Allred said. Paramedics took a 9-month-old baby girl to a hospital with critical injuries, where she remains hospitalized. Police also discovered a marijuana-growing operation inside the apartment.

Investigators determined the girl’s injuries happened while in the care of Rader, who is the boyfriend of the mom and not the victim’s dad, Allred said. Two other children, a 6-year-old boy and a 2-year-old boy, were at the home and uninjured. They were taken into police protective custody.

Rader was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on suspicion of child abuse, child endangerment, marijuana possession, distributing drugs and possessing drug paraphernalia, arrest records show.

The case was one of two over the weekend involving men arrested on suspicion of abusing children. Allred said there was one child death case in 2016, two in 2017, three in 2018 and four in 2019.

“We’ve had a few over the last couple years, and it’s very well possible that these two could turn into a child fatality, too,” Allred said of the two cases.

The investigation is ongoing.

This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 11:37 AM.