Burnsville Man Charged with Leaving Bruises on Toddler

A Burnsville man awaiting trial on third-degree assault charges is now facing a charge of hitting a Burnsville toddler hard enough to leave bruises this week.

Brandon James Fraher, 27, is charged with malicious punishment of a child, which carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $3,000 fine. 

Fraher remains in the Dakota County Jail on a $6,000 bond. An omnibus hearing the case is scheduled May 14 in Dakota County District Court in Hastings.

According to the criminal complaint, the mother of the 21-year-old victim called Burnsville police just before 9 p.m. April 23 and “hysterically reported” that Fraher, her live-in boyfriend, had hurt her baby.

The mother told police that she had left her daughter in Fraher’s care at about 3:30 p.m. when she went to work. When she returned home at about 8:15 p.m., the child was acting as if she was afraid of Fraher and repeatedly asked her mother if she could go “bye-bye,” according to the complaint.

Fraher told the woman that he had “smacked” the child’s buttocks because he didn’t like how she was acting, the complaint says. When the mother checked, she found bruises on the child’s buttocks, she told police.

When the woman asked Fraher to leave, he told her that he had held the toddler down by pushing on her neck, according to the complaint. The mother checked and found bruises on the little girl’s neck and other marks on her body, she said.

Fraher, whose driver’s license has been suspended, was found driving near the apartment was stopped by police. He told officers that he had gotten mad and hit the child “way too hard,” according to the complaint.

Fraher also told police that the toddler had fallen on her head on the swing set, tripped the stairs and fallen and had fallen off the “firepole,” the complaint says.

Fraher said he had pushed the child’s neck “like a chiropractor,” whom he said he had taken the child to see the day before, according to the complaint.

Police contacted the chiropractic office that Fraher named, and were told that they hadn’t seen the child.

Fraher is awaiting trial on a felony charge of third-degree assault. That charge stems from an incident last August in which he is accused of beating a man unconscious at Bogart’s in Apple Valley; his trial in that case is scheduled to begin July 16.