<hr>
Boy, 6, Dies After Being Left Overnight Inside Oven
HOUSTON -- A man was charged with murder Tuesday in the death of his girlfriend's 6-year-old son, whose body was found in an oven.
Kenneth Lee Pierott, 27, is accused of killing Tre-Devin Odoms, who was left overnight in the oven at the boy's Beaumont home last week.
Preliminary autopsy results indicated the boy was asphyxiated. He had no burn marks or visible injuries, Justice of the Peace Paul Brown said.
According to a police affidavit, Pierott believed the child was "draining the life" from his 2-year-old son, Jacory, and "he needed to kill Trey so that Jacory could breathe."
Kenneth Pierott's mother, Urestine Pierott, has described him as "a sweet, young man that any mother would have trusted" but who suffers from a mental illness.
She told The Associated Press she first realized her son was mentally ill in 1996 when he killed her oldest child, a 25-year-old woman who suffered from cerebral palsy, by beating her with a dumbbell.
Pierott was found innocent by reason of insanity for her slaying and was released from a state hospital in 1998.
Police say Pierott fled the home of his girlfriend, Kathy Jo Odoms, shortly after 6 a.m. Friday when the woman woke up because she felt warm and smelled gas. She also is the mother of Jacory, who was in bed with her.
"She started to get up and Kenneth told her to go back to sleep, that she didn't have to worry about no job, daycare or ironing clothes," police detective Sheila K. Barton said in an affidavit.
Pierott was arrested later in Houston and returned to Beaumont after his father called authorities. He remained jailed Tuesday.
<hr>
LINK