Tears and sniffles filled a packed Larimer County Justice Center courtroom on Friday as a judge sentenced a man to 18 years in prison for throwing an infant in his care across a room and causing life-altering injuries.

The June 30 incident took place when 24-year-old Caleb Collins was babysitting the then-7-month-old son of friends in Fort Collins. Collins palmed the boy by the face and threw him after the child crawled toward his PlayStation 4 video game console and pulled on one of the cables, according to police reports and court testimony.

The boy flipped in the air and hit his head twice on the ground before coming to a rest. He suffered a skull fracture, bruising and bleeding in his brain, and 10 months later he cannot sit up without support and regularly returns to the hospital for treatment.

Friday's three-hour sentencing included statements from the infant's mother, Collins' friends and family and Collins himself, who sobbed and shook as he apologized for the pain he caused the boy's family and his own loved ones.

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Collins' loved ones and defense counsel described his actions as a split-second mistake borne out of intense stress and frustration. They said Collins is a kind, gentle and deeply religious man with no history of violence who worked hard to support his wife and 2-year-old son while also attending college for exercise science.

"This mistake went against everything I am and everything I've ever known," Collins said to 8th Judicial District Judge Julie Kunce Field through tears. "I hurt a family in ways I would never wish upon anyone. I hurt them so much that it's killing me inside."

Collins' friends and family asked Field to take mercy on Collins and give him the minimum sentence of 10 years. Collins' son has already shown signs of emotional damage from court-mandated separation, his wife said.

But the prosecution asked for the maximum sentence of 32 years, calling Collins' actions not a mistake but a tragedy.

"I couldn't imagine taking a father away from his son and a son away from his mother," said the mother of the infant whom Collins injured. "But I also couldn't imagine what (my son) went through," she added, referring to the boy's eight-day coma and continued health issues. "We only want the justice for our son that he deserves."

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Collins initially pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and child abuse and was set for a bench trial, but the plea deal lowered his charges to one count of child abuse resulting in serious bodily injury, a Class 3 felony.

Had Field determined Collins was guilty of the initial charges, he would've been sentenced to as many as 90 years in prison.

Friday's hearing provided new insights about a chain of events previously described only in Collins' affidavit of arrest.

Collins was looking after the infant and his own son the morning of June 30 in an Old Town Fort Collins home when the infant pulled on the PlayStation cord and Collins threw him across the room.

He first called his mother, who told him to dial 911. Collins told dispatchers he'd accidentally dropped the boy while fumbling with a box of DVDs, but doctors and police investigators said the infant's injuries weren't consistent with Collins' descriptions.

During his third interview with police, confronted with the conflicting evidence, Collins admitted to police that he'd thrown the boy. The man was crying under the table in the interview room and was suicidal, his attorney said in court on Friday.

Previously:Records: Babysitter threw child for touching PlayStation

Collins' family members said he prays daily for the boy's health and well-being, has had panic attacks and wishes he could switch places with the boy.

"Caleb is already in prison in his mind," said his mother, Deborah Collins. "When he wakes up from sleep, this is the first thing on his mind. When he falls asleep, this is the last thing on his mind."

But it is the infant victim who is truly imprisoned in his own body, prosecutor Cara Boxberger countered. After "catastrophic" brain damage that nearly killed him, the boy will never be able to lead a normal life, Boxberger said.

"We may never know what (the boy) could have accomplished, because the defendant took that away from him in a split second over a PlayStation," she said.

Field, speaking to about 50 people in the courtroom after a half-hour of deliberation, handed down Collins' sentence as late spring snow fell outside the justice center.

"True justice would be to go back to the morning of June 30 and have these violent events never happen, and I can't do that," she said. "What I can do is give a rough approximation of justice for the promises that have been lost and the lives that have been changed."

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