CLARK COUNTY — The parents of a child that died in December 2023 have pled guilty to permitting child abuse as they face criminal disposition on March 25, according to Clark County court records.
Landan Jennings and Angel Seiker were arrested nine months after their child, Braxton Jennings, died. Deputies spent that time investigating the child’s death.
Both Jennings and Seiker pleaded guilty to permitting child abuse, which is a felony, in the past month. They are also facing charges of murder, felonious assault and endangering children.
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Clark County deputies and medics were called to a home near New Carlisle about a child’s illness in December 2023, but deputies said this long investigation showed something more sinister. They arrested the mother and father, 25-year-old Landan Jennings and 21-year-old Angel Seiker, who relatives insist are innocent.
“Nobody’s abusing him. Nobody was abusing him,” Amy Owens, Jennings’ mother and the child’s grandmother, said after the couple’s arrest in 2024.
She and Asia Potts were cleaning the couple’s apartments after their arrest. They were shocked by the child’s death, which they believe was caused by a rhinovirus. They were equally shocked by the couple’s arrest nine months later.
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“These investigations are not fast, they’re not quick,” Lt. Kris Shultz, Detective Lieutenant for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, said after the couple’s arrest. “We rely on the medical community, the forensic medical community.”
Shultz said the investigation looked at the presenting problems the child was rushed to the children’s hospital with and the underlying concerns uncovered by doctors and then the coroners and forensic pathologists.
As shown on News Center 7 at 5:00, Mike Campbell asked Shultz if investigators believed there was anything accidental about the infant’s death. He said “No.”
“This points to an acute isolated situation taking place as part of a pattern of conduct over a period of time,” Shultz said.
He told News Center 7 that it is possible that the injuries they discovered happened at the couple’s apartment in Fairborn, as well as other possible locations.
The child’s grandmother just can’t believe her son and his girlfriend would hurt a child they loved.
“I just lost my 16-year-old son two years ago,” Owens said. “I can’t lose my second son.”
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