The father of a 7-month-old baby who died in July and who told authorities he accidentally dropped the child is now accused of strangling and beating the boy. He’s also accused of tampering with a witness.
According to indictments handed down last week in the 70th Ector County District Court, Logan Pierson was struck in the head on multiple occasions and sustained a broken hyoid bone while being strangled. His father, Kameron Gammage, is accused of committing those acts and of throwing the child up into the air and dropping him on the ground.
Gammage, 23, was indicted on one count of capital murder of a person under 10, injury to a child and tampering with a witness. According to that indictment, one month after his son’s death he tried to convince a woman to either withhold her testimony or provide false testimony as to his whereabouts on the day Logan was found dead.
Gammage has remained in jail since his arrest July 12. His bond has been increased to $1,550,000.
Ector County District Attorney Dusty Gallivan said he has not decided if he will seek the death penalty for Gammage, but declined to comment further.
The child’s mother, Leyla Grace Pierson, 18, was indicted last week on two counts of injury to a child. According to the indictment, she’s accused of placing her son “in an environment which allowed” Gammage to commit the acts that led to the child’s death and she failed to seek medical treatment for the boy’s head injuries.
Originally arrested July 12, she was released from jail July 14 after posting a bond of $100,000. She was re-arrested Monday and she remained in custody as of Tuesday morning on bonds totaling $200,000.
Odessa Police received a 911 call about a baby who wasn’t breathing at 12:52 p.m. July 12 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 indicates Pierson told officers she fed her son around 5 a.m. July 12 and woke up around noon to find him not breathing.
Gammage told police he has “extreme anger issues” and admitted he dropped his son while “playing catch” with him three days before the child died. Gammage said the baby had been crying a lot and causing him 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.”
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.
Family members have said the alleged victim in the Andrews case is Pierson.
