An accusation of murder was deposited on Friday against a man accused of having beaten the 5-year-old son of his ex-girlfriend and having left the body inside a dumpster in Panorama City last week, the authorities announced.
Bryson Gaddis, 20, was arrested on Wednesday and, if he was found guilty, exercised a potential life in life imprisonment in the vicious death of Elyjiah Hearn, according to the Los Angeles County prosecutor’s office. Prosecutors accused him of murder and assault against a child causing death, the authorities announced.
“This is really a heartbreaking and horrible case, and our deepest sympathies go to the family of the young victim,” said Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said in a statement. “We are committed to seeking justice and we ensure that this defendant is held responsible for his actions.”
Gaddis did not argue during a brief appearance before the court in Van Nuys and must be returned to court next month, officials said.
Prosecutors allege that Gaddis beat the boy to death inside an apartment in the 14500 block of Lanark Street on July 11. The boy’s body was found the next day in what prosecutors have described as a “commercial parking lot”.
A law enforcement official previously declared the Times that the boy had undergone “massive injuries”, including a broken jaw, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver. The manager spoke under the cover of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media.
Gaddis and the boy’s mother Kemia Hearn had left with the past, but Gaddis was not the boy’s father. The victim’s grandfather, Troy Hearn Sr., said that Gaddis had hunted down his daughter.
“It’s very heartbreaking for him to do this to my 5-year-old grandson,” said Hearn Sr. earlier this week. “I identify the body this afternoon. I am overwhelmed and so angry that I can’t even explain it. This guy is a villain and it is lucky that the police have it. ”
Gaddis was in police custody more than once in the past year, but he avoided trials twice before jury that could have sent him to prison. An arrest warrant was issued three months before the murder, according to the files.
Last July, the prosecutors charged Gaddis and two others to divert and beat someone with a “metal bar” in Baldwin Park. But the case was rejected in mid-December when a prosecutor announced that he was “unable to proceed” on the day of the preliminary hearing of Gaddis, according to the judicial archives.
Ricardo Santiago, spokesperson for the County Prosecutor’s Office, said on Friday that the case had been rejected because the prosecutors could not find the victims in the case of the diversion of the car at the time of the preliminary hearing.
Gaddis had been in prison for six months at the time, but was sentenced to liberation shortly after.
Six weeks later, Gaddis was arrested by Los Angeles police for having repeatedly struck his girlfriend in a complex of Hollywood apartments. The victim in this case was not Elyjiah’s mother, according to the files.
Gaddis was charged with domestic violence and false imprisonment, but authorized to remain free while carrying an electronic surveillance device. In April, Gaddis did not appear before the court for his planned trial and a judge issued an arrest warrant against his arrest.
A month later, his electronic surveillance system lacked power and he ignored the recording calls for the company that published the device, according to the recordings. An alert was sent to the Los Angeles County Probation Service.
The Los Angeles City prosecutor’s office referred questions to the Los Angeles police service, which did not answer a question about the measures, if necessary, which they took to redo Gaddis after dodging their trial date. But given that Gaddis had no criminal record after the dismissal of the case of the diversion of the car, it is unlikely that the police would have given priority to the arrest of a defendant who was sought on a mandate of offense.
Vicky Waters, spokesperson for the probation department, said that Gaddis was “not under active surveillance” by the agency because his case had not yet been tried.
“Probation has no role of application in these circumstances,” said Waters.
The writer Summer Lin contributed to this report.