Lucas Braman

Name: Lucas Braman.
Died: February 13, 2014.
Age at death: 1.
Cause of death: Unknown.
Location: West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, USA.

Details:
Lucas’s caretaker blamed his “autistic-like behaviors” on his having been born addicted to painkillers because his mother was taking them after a car accident injured her when she was eight months pregnant. Lucas and his sister Layla were being cared for by his mother’s cousin. Whether Lucas would have been diagnosed as autistic if he had lived is unknown; he was too young for a firm diagnosis when he died.

“He was always happy, healthy. He was always smiling, hugged everybody,” his grandmother says. Lucas liked candy, the Celtics, and playing with their pet chickens.

Lucas was nearly two years old when he died. He was wearing a helmet and wrapped in a weighted blanket that weighed a quarter or more what Lucas weighed. He had stopped breathing and could not be revived. An autopsy could not determine cause of death.

Lucas’s mother and four-year-old sister Layla have made allegations of abuse. They say that Lucas and Layla were pinched, bitten, put in cold showers and forced to eat hot sauce, and Layla’s arm was broken when their caretaker grabbed and shook her.

When Layla asks where her brother has gone, her mother explains that Lucas is in heaven, “playing on the biggest jungle gym in the world.”

In 2021, the caregiver who had custody of Lucas when he died was indicted on charges of child abuse and child sexual assault.

References:
Barnstable grand jury indicts woman, 29, on child rape and assault charges
How did Lucas Braman die?
Report details pattern of abuse in toddler’s death
Lucas: Two families, two portrayals of Yarmouth toddler
Grieving mother of tot under DCF watch: ‘I want to know how he died’
More questions than answers in death of 2-year-old on Cape Cod
No resolution in Yarmouth child’s death