CLAYTON — A 23-year-old man gets life in prison plus 10 years for beating his girlfriend’s toddler son to death in St. Louis County and dumping the body near a school.
Randall Gabler of House Springs was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and child abuse in a plea agreement with prosecutors. A grand jury had indicted him on a first-degree murder charge.
Gabler told police he killed 2-year-old Adin Choi in a motel room near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport last summer because the boy had wet his pants and was crying. Gabler stuffed the body into a suitcase and took it to rural Jefferson County where he dumped it near a trash bin at a school.
At the time, Gabler told authorities that someone had kidnapped the child.
Gabler’s girlfriend was visiting relatives in New York and had left her son in his care.