Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Jury still being picked in trial of man accused of killing girlfriend’s baby daughter

Trial expected to take at least two weeks, according to public defender

Cody Geddings in Court

Accused of killing his girlfriend's 16-month-old daughter, Cody Geddings appears in Henderson Justice Court in on Monday, April 12, 2010. Launch slideshow »

Opening arguments could begin late Wednesday afternoon in the child abuse murder trial of a Henderson man who is charged in connection with the 2010 death of his girlfriend’s baby daughter.

Jury selection was to continue late Wednesday morning and probably early into the afternoon in the trial of Cody Geddings, 26, who has been charged with murder and child abuse with substantial bodily harm in the death of Addison Weast, a 16-month-old toddler he was babysitting.

According to police, Jaime Higgons, who was then 19, had on March 31, 2010, taken her daughter to the St. Rose de Lima Hospital, saying Addison had fallen from her crib.

However, police investigating the case said the severity of the injuries was inconsistent with that explanation. Higgons told authorities that her boyfriend, Geddings, had been babysitting the girl when the injury occurred, according to the police report.

Geddings told officers the girl had a seizure while she was in her playpen. He then told officers the girl had been playing near a wobbly chair in the backyard of his home, and that a full-sized acetylene gas cylinder fell on her.

Addison was taken from St. Rose de Lima Hospital to University Medical Center’s trauma unit for surgery. At the time she was transported, her vital signs were stable, but UMC doctors discovered the child’s skull had been shattered above her right ear, which had caused hemorrhaging in her brain, according to the police report.

She died at UMC of apparent head and spinal injuries, authorities have said.

Geddings is currently in the Clark County Detention Center, where he is being held without bail.

Norman Reed, one of his public defenders, said the trial was expected to take at least two weeks.

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