The Texas father of a 7-month-old baby who died Tuesday had charges upgraded to capital murder Thursday while the baby’s mom has posted bail.
23-year-old Kameron Gammage who told police Tuesday he has “extreme anger issues” and admitted he dropped his son while “playing catch” with him three days before the child died.
The child’s 18-year-old mother, Leyla Pierson, posted $5,000 bail while Gammage remains at the Ector County Jail, having originally been arrested on suspicion of injury to a child. His bail is set at $350,000.
Odessa Police received a 911 call about a baby who wasn’t breathing at 12:52 p.m. Tuesday from the Brady Station Apartments in the 4200 block of East 52nd Street. When they arrived, they found the baby, who would have turned 8-months-old on July 23, deceased with heavy bruising and swelling to the left side of his face and head and smaller bruises along the top of his cranium.
An Odessa Police Department report details that Pierson told officers she fed her son, Logan, around 5 a.m. Tuesday and woke up around noon to find him not breathing. She said she went to Gammage to wake Gammage up, but he took several minutes to get up, seemed uncaring and asked her what she wanted him to do.
After telling him to call 911, Gammage became apologetic and told her he hoped she wasn’t mad at him, Pierson told authorities.
Pierson told police Gammage has extreme anger issues and had recently strangled several dogs to death, according to the report.
Gammage admitted to having problems with extreme anger and said the baby had been crying a lot and causing him additional stress, according to the report. He also admitted to strangling two dogs recently and disposing of their bodies to avoid getting into trouble.
In Gammage’s arrest affidavit, police wrote Gammage “remained unemotional and seemed to lack care about the incident throughout contact.”
Initially, Gammage told authorities his son had hit his head on a hard portion of the interior of his crib, according to the report.
Eventually, however, Gammage told police he and Pierson smoked marijuana on Saturday and while Pierson was sleeping, Logan began to cry so he decided to toss him into the air to get him to stop crying.
“Kameron claimed he ‘accidentally’ dropped the infant after the fourth toss, which caused the infant to land on his left side,” the report stated. “Kameron reported the infant hit the floor ‘hard’ when he landed.”
Gammage said he didn’t tell Pierson what had happened because he was afraid of getting into trouble.
“Kameron reported the infant began acting unusual over the next couple of days, and when he saw the infant deceased this morning, his initial thought was something like he killed his kid,” the report stated.
Pierson told authorities that when she asked Gammage about the baby’s injuries, he told her Logan had “probably hit his head on a hard part of the crib,” the report stated. She assumed his fussiness over the next few days was due to teething.
Online jail records show Gammage is also being held on a sexual assault of a child charge out of Andrews County.
According to the Andrews Police Department, they began investigating Gammage in August 2021 for offenses that were alleged to have occurred in 2019 and 2020 when the alleged victim was 15 years of age. He was indicted on May 19.
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