A Pennsylvania father has been charged with homicide after police say he admitted to beating his four-month-old daughter to death because she would not stop crying.
Joseph 'Joe' Gazzam, 30, initially told officers the baby had fallen out of bed at their Mt. Lebanon home on Sunday.
However, the Allegheny County Police say Gazzam changed his story on Monday and confessed to the killing after an autopsy showed Victoria Gazzam had a laundry-list of injuries and broken bones.
The 30-year-old former US Army truck driver confessed to repeatedly punching the newborn baby with a closed first because she was 'fussy' and would not stop crying or go back to sleep, which made him ‘angry.’
Baby Victoria was rushed to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
The next day, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office completed the autopsy, which determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and trunk, and ruled the manner of death a homicide.
Following a police investigation, Gazzam was arrested on charges of homicide, recklessly endangering another person, and endangering the welfare of a child.
On Sunday morning, Gazzam was left in charge of his baby daughter while her mother, Kayla Walters, went to work at a restaurant at around 7am, reported the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
During his initial interview, Gazzam told police the infant woke up at around 10.30am, at which time he changed her diaper and gave her baby formula.
The father and daughter later went to take a nap on the bed together, and when he woke up shortly after noon, he found the child lying face down on the floor.
However, after the medical examiner released the autopsy report showing that baby Victoria suffered injuries that could not have been caused by a fall from a mattress that was 2 feet, 2 inches above a carpeted floor, including a brain bleed; lacerated heart vessel; lacerated left kidney; liver contusion; multiple bruises to the back and head; bleeding behind the eyes and three fractured ribs, Gazzam offered a different narrative.
A criminal complaint quoted Gazzam as telling police that his daughter ‘stopped breathing and her eyes rolled back in the head,’ at which point he called 911.