Justin Golden stands with attorney Kenneth Williams as he is sentenced to 30 years in prison in his baby's death. | News4Jax
Published on December 19, 2025 at 3:09 pm
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It’s been 11 months since an 8-month-old baby died after his father put him on the street and drove over him. Now the dad has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Justin Golden, 21, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and asked Judge London Kite on Friday for leniency, saying the child’s death was an accident.
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Instead, Kite imposed an even longer sentence than prosecutors sought. She called Golden’s acts “gross and flagrant conduct.”
The judge heard character statements from Golden’s father and grandfather but then said: “What I am left with is a young man that stands before me. You, I believe, are everything that your family says you are. There appears to be nothing that this court needs to rehabilitate because you are by all accounts an exemplary young man that made a terrible choice about a son that you were entrusted with his care.”
The baby’s death
Police said Golden and his girlfriend were arguing in his vehicle Jan. 25 when he stopped at Lenox and McDuff avenues on the Westside. She took baby Pablo Golden out of a car seat, put him in a front passenger seat and got out, witnesses said.
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Golden then opened the driver’s door, put Pablo on the street and drove off. His left rear tire rolled over the baby, who died, police said
In lieu of a trial, Golden pleaded guilty in September to aggravated manslaughter of a child. Golden’s grandfather, Tony Harden, testified Friday that his grandson is kind and loving and “not a mean person.”
What happened that day was an accident, Harden told the judge.
“How can you punish somebody for an accident? That’s what I keep asking myself,” he said. “If I accidentally step on somebody’s foot, I would not want you to punish me. If I deliberately did it, that’s something else. If I thought that he did that deliberately, I would have no problem — yes, you should be in jail. But I don’t think that he should.”
After the prosecution and defense attorneys questioned the two family members, Assistant State Attorney John Kalinowski made his final plea to the judge.
Referring to video of the January incident, Kalinowski said he had watched it more times than he cared to count, leaving him “shocked and appalled and saddened.”
“Pablo Golden was in a safe place, and it was his father who intentionally took him from a place of safety to a place of danger, where he was killed,” Kalinowski said. “The defendant killed his own child.”
Kalinowski asked the judge for a 25-year prison term. Golden’s attorney, Kenneth Williams, proposed a 12-month sentence in the Duval County jail, plus probation and a suspended drivers license.
Williams asked the judge to take “gravity and mercy” into account since his client admitted his guilt.
Then Golden himself spoke to the judge for the first time, apologizing and saying he deserves “judicial punishment.”
“I cannot completely tell the court how sorrowful I am for the stupid and criminal conduct that caused me to kill my son Pablo. I take full responsibility for my action, and I make no excuses and blame no one else,” he said. “While I did not intend to kill my son and had no criminal intent, I know that is not enough. I failed as his protector and his father, and I was the monster who killed him.”
Golden was originally charged with vehicular homicide, which could have netted him up to 60 years in prison when combined with the aggravated manslaughter charge.
The homicide charge was dropped, and Golden pleaded guilty to the other charge instead of going to trial.
