Parents Feed Their Infant Oxycontin Freezing His Eyeballs

Parents Feed Their Infant Oxycontin Freezing His Eyeballs

The illusion of a quiet morning in a suburban home is a powerful thing. To the outside world, a silent house at 11:00 a.m. suggests a peaceful family resting. But inside a home on the Gulf Coast of Florida, the silence was the sound of a tragedy that had been quietly unfolding for fourteen hours.

In his crib, seven-month-old Damian Landry lay unresponsive. He was a boy who had fought unimaginable odds just to take his first breath, only to have his last breath stolen from him in the very place he was supposed to be safest.

When paramedics arrived, they found a frantic scene. Damian’s parents, Amber and Scott, were attempting CPR on their son. The infant was in full cardiac arrest. Despite the desperate efforts of first responders, and later the emergency room physicians, Damian could not be saved.

Initially, it looked like a devastating case of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), or perhaps a tragic complication stemming from the boy’s complex medical history. But as investigators peeled back the layers of the Landry household, a much darker reality emerged. It was a reality steeped in the modern American nightmare of prescription opioid addiction—a crisis that had seeped out of locked medicine cabinets and into a baby’s bottle.

This is the story of how a miracle infant survived the intensive care unit, only to succumb to the lethal decisions of those entrusted with his care.

Part I: The Miracle Child
To understand the tragedy of Damian Landry’s death, one must first understand the monumental effort it took to keep him alive in the first place.

Damian was not a typical infant. According to medical records and interviews with his mother, Amber, his entry into the world was fraught with peril. Born at just 24 weeks—nearly four and a half months premature—Damian’s early birth was triggered by a breech position and sudden maternal contractions. He was delivered via emergency C-section, a procedure so abrupt and physically taxing on his fragile, underdeveloped body that it resulted in a grade-four brain bleed.

For the first four months of his life, Damian lived inside the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was a fighter. Doctors managed to stop the brain bleed. For two months, a machine breathed for him while he was intubated. When he finally grew strong enough to breathe on his own, it felt like a triumph of modern medicine.

When Damian finally came home, the house was transformed into a makeshift medical ward. He required an apnea monitor to track his breathing and an oxygen tube routed through his nose. Over time, he grew stronger, weaning off the oxygen and settling into a routine. Because of his prematurity, his digestive system was delicate. He couldn’t consume standard formula, relying instead on Peptamen, a specialized, soy-based liquid nutrition source, alongside small portions of table food.

He was monitored by a small army of specialists: a pediatrician, a pulmonologist, a cardiologist, a neurologist, a neurosurgeon, and an ophthalmologist. By all accounts, his medical trajectory was pointing upward.

“He actually was the easiest baby to take care of,” Amber would later tell detectives in a recorded interview. “He was so good. He wasn’t fussy, didn’t whine. He was the best baby in the world.”

Yet, lurking behind the meticulously scheduled doctor’s appointments and the specialized formula was a shadow that threatened the fragile stability of the Landry home.

Part II: The Fourteen-Hour Window
The timeline of Damian’s final hours is a chilling study in parental neglect and shifting narratives.

According to Amber’s initial statements to police at the hospital, the night before the tragedy was entirely routine. The family—Amber, her husband Scott, their two-year-old daughter Angelina, and Damian—had dinner. Damian ate some chicken and rice at 7:00 p.m., followed by a bottle of his specialized formula at 9:00 p.m. By 9:30 p.m., he was placed in his crib in his bedroom, located on the opposite side of the house. He was dressed warmly in a long-sleeve pajama shirt and pants.

Amber claimed she woke up the next morning and tended to her two-year-old daughter. Knowing Damian had been suffering from a seasonal cold and congestion—for which he had been receiving nebulizer treatments—she decided to let him sleep in.

At approximately 11:30 a.m., fourteen hours after Damian was put to bed, Amber said she heard a noise on the baby monitor.

“It kind of sounded like he was giggling, like laughing, so I went in and checked on him,” Amber told a detective in her first interview. She claimed she found him lying on his belly, sound asleep, but breathing abnormally. In a bizarre twist, rather than waking him or calling a doctor immediately, Amber stated she used her phone to record the sound of his ragged breathing, intending to show it to his pediatrician later that day.

She then left the room.

Twenty minutes later, the silence from the baby monitor became deafening. Amber returned to the nursery. She touched his back. She rolled him over. When she picked him up, his small body went entirely limp.

Amber ran through the house screaming for her husband, Scott, an Army veteran who was in the master bedroom watching television. They laid the infant on the floor and began CPR, a procedure they had been trained in due to Damian’s medical history. Amber rushed outside to find a cell phone signal to call 911, leaving Scott inside to continue chest compressions.

An ambulance arrived shortly after, rushing the boy to the hospital. But the damage was already done. Damian was in full cardiopulmonary arrest.

As doctors fought a losing battle to save the infant, police began asking routine questions. At first, Amber presented herself as a devoted, exhausted mother of a medically complex child. When asked if the child was on any medications, she listed only a treatment for acid reflux. When asked if there was any reason for anything else to be in his system, she flatly replied, “No, nothing at all.”

She was asked if anyone in the house used illegal drugs. “No,” she answered.

But science, unlike human beings, does not lie. And the toxicology report that was about to come back from the hospital lab would shatter the facade of the Landry family completely.

Part III: The Chemistry of Deception
While Amber was giving her first interview, Damian’s condition continued to deteriorate. Tragically, he soon passed away. By the time detectives sat down with Amber for a second interview, the tone had drastically shifted. This was no longer a routine inquiry into a sudden medical event; it was a homicide investigation.

The emergency room doctors had run a urinalysis and blood work on the infant. The results were catastrophic.

Damian’s blood contained a lethal, toxic level of Oxycodone. The medical examiner would later confirm that the seven-month-old infant died from cardiopulmonary arrest, with pneumonia secondary to profound oxycodone intoxication.

Armed with this damning medical evidence, detectives returned to the interrogation room. The delicate approach was gone, replaced by the relentless pressure of investigators who knew they were being lied to.

“We deal with drug addicts all the time, Amber,” the lead detective began, his voice steady but unyielding. “Because I deal with drug addicts a lot in my profession, I know how they are, especially those that are abusing opiates.”

The detectives had uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle that Amber had conveniently omitted during her first interview: Both she and her husband were heavily dependent on prescription opioids.

Scott, injured during his time in the Army, was receiving prescriptions from a doctor in Port Charlotte. Amber was receiving her own opiate prescriptions from a doctor in Tampa. The household was awash in highly potent, highly regulated narcotics.

Amber was forced to admit that she had lied about the presence of drugs in the home. She claimed she had hidden the truth because she was afraid of getting “kicked out” of her pain management clinic if the authorities got involved.

But admitting to having drugs in the home was one thing; explaining how a massive, lethal dose ended up in a seven-month-old baby’s bloodstream was another.

“How does your son get oxycodone?” the detective pressed.

“I don’t know,” Amber replied, her voice wavering. “I wish I knew. I don’t know.”

Amber scrambled to offer an alternative theory. She suggested that perhaps a pill had been accidentally dropped on the floor, and that Damian, who was just learning to crawl, had found it and swallowed it.

It was a desperate theory, and the detectives dismantled it using basic biology and forensic science.

“The accidental theory is out of the way,” the detective explained coldly. “This is science. This is medical proven technology. You put Damian in the crib at 9:30 at night. You don’t take Damian out of the crib till 11:30 the next day. That’s a 14-hour time frame.”

The detective laid out the pharmacokinetics of prescription opioids. Pills feature time-release coatings. They digest, metabolize, and peak in the bloodstream on a predictable, scientifically measurable timeline. If Damian had found a pill on the living room floor at 8:00 p.m. before being put in his crib, his body would have metabolized it hours earlier, and he would have shown signs of profound distress long before the next morning.

The staggering level of oxycodone found in Damian’s system perfectly matched a dose given to him much later—during the 14-hour window when he was confined to his crib, entirely dependent on his parents.

“He didn’t find it on the floor, it was put there,” the detective stated firmly. “And that’s what we’re telling you. It is impossible, not that it’s not probable, it’s impossible according to the levels, Amber. I think you owe it to Damian.”

Still, Amber refused to confess. She deflected, pointing subtly at her husband while simultaneously defending him. She revealed that Scott’s addiction was so severe that she had to act as his “nurse,” keeping their opioid supply locked in a specialized drawer or hidden deep inside her purse, which she slept with under her pillow.

“Did Scott have any keys?” the detective asked.
“No,” Amber replied.
“Why?”
“Because he would abuse them too much,” she admitted. “I would only give him what he would need… so that way he wouldn’t get too excessive like he was in the past.”

If Scott was locked out of the drugs, and Amber held the only key, the circle of suspects who could have poisoned the infant shrank to almost nothing. Yet, Amber maintained her ignorance, swearing on her deceased son’s life that she did not give him the medication.

When detectives interviewed Scott, the interaction was brief and equally fruitless. The father, described by investigators as frequently being under the influence, stuck to a bare-bones narrative: he was watching TV, his wife brought in the lifeless baby, and he performed CPR. When asked if there was any medicine the child could have gotten into, Scott simply answered, “No.”

Part IV: The Silent Sibling and the Horrifying Motive
If the police had any lingering doubts about whether the poisoning was a freak, one-in-a-million accident, those doubts were eradicated by the hospital’s examination of the Landrys’ other child.

Following Damian’s death, Child Protective Services and medical personnel immediately evaluated two-year-old Angelina. Her toxicology report sent shockwaves through the investigative team.

Angelina, a toddler, tested positive for both benzodiazepines (powerful anti-anxiety tranquilizers) and opiates.

Suddenly, the narrative shifted from a single, horrific anomaly to a terrifying, calculated pattern of child abuse. The presence of these heavy, adult-grade narcotics in a toddler who could not access locked drawers or zippered purses pointed to an unthinkable conclusion: “Chemical babysitting.”

The working theory among investigators and child advocates was grim. Taking care of two young children—especially one with complex medical needs stemming from extreme prematurity—is exhausting for any parent. For two parents severely dependent on prescription narcotics, whose days revolved around managing their own withdrawals and highs, the children were likely viewed as a burdensome interruption.

Rather than put in the sleepless nights and relentless effort required to soothe a sick, crying infant and an energetic toddler, the evidence suggested the parents were dosing their children’s bottles and sippy cups with crushed narcotics to force them to sleep.

When confronted with Angelina’s toxicology results, the detective’s frustration boiled over.

“How did Angelina get the drugs in her system?” he demanded of Amber.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Okay, she found them on the floor too?” the detective asked sarcastically.
“Don’t know.”

The detective stared at the mother sitting across from him. “For being a mom, you don’t know a whole lot of what goes on with your children, and I find that very disturbing… I can’t believe that you’re out in left field so far that you don’t even know what goes on with your kids.”

Both parents maintained their wall of denial. They blamed the floor, they blamed the couch cushions, they blamed the unknown. But the medical science stood absolute: two children, living in a house guarded by baby gates, both testing positive for the exact narcotics their parents were prescribed.

One child survived. The other did not.

Part V: A Verdict That Stunned the Public
As the case moved from the interrogation room to the courtroom, the public expected the heavy hand of the justice system to fall squarely on Amber and Scott Landry. The opioid epidemic has ravaged thousands of American communities, but cases involving the direct, fatal drugging of an infant usually result in decades behind bars, if not life sentences.

The state had overwhelming medical evidence of the toxicity. They had proof of the parents’ prescriptions. They had the toxicology report of the surviving sibling. They had the undeniable 14-hour timeline that proved the baby could not have poisoned himself.

But the criminal justice system is often complex, and proving which parent administered the fatal dose beyond a reasonable doubt when both point the finger at a mysterious “accident” can be a legal hurdle. Because neither parent confessed to the physical act of putting the Oxycodone into Damian’s formula, the prosecution faced a challenge in pursuing first-degree murder charges.

Ultimately, the charges brought against the parents reflected severe neglect and manslaughter rather than intentional, premeditated homicide.

The final sentencing, however, left child advocates and community members reeling in disbelief.

For his role in the environment that led to his son’s death, Scott Landry was sentenced to just 2 years in prison.

Amber Landry, the mother who held the key to the lockbox, who recorded her son’s dying breaths on a cell phone instead of calling an ambulance, and who systematically lied to investigators, was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

A combined total of seven years for a lifetime stolen.

To many observers, the sentences felt like a profound miscarriage of justice. Damian Landry had spent the first four months of his life fighting through brain bleeds and ventilators just to survive. The medical professionals at All Children’s Hospital had moved mountains to give him a chance at a normal life. Yet, the justice system deemed the negligent, drug-fueled actions that ended that life to be worth only a handful of years in a state penitentiary.

As one observer of the case noted, “I’ve slept longer than seven years.”

The surviving child, Angelina, was immediately removed from the home and placed into state care, sparing her from the toxic environment that claimed her brother.

Epilogue: The Collateral Damage of a Crisis
The tragic death of Damian Landry is more than just a true-crime story; it is a dark reflection of the collateral damage caused by America’s opioid epidemic. While the national conversation often focuses on overdose statistics among adults, the silent victims are frequently the children trapped behind closed doors with addicted caretakers.

Damian’s crib, decorated with stuffed animals and a soft comforter, should have been a sanctuary. Instead, it became the final resting place for a boy whose parents prioritized their chemical dependency over his right to live.

There are no winners in the tragedy of the Landry family. There is only a surviving toddler who will grow up without a brother, two parents who traded their freedom and their family for pills, and a small headstone for a boy who fought so hard to enter the world, only to be pushed out of it by the very hands meant to hold him.

The seven-year combined sentence will eventually end. Amber and Scott will walk out of prison and attempt to resume their lives. But the medical evidence, the audio recordings of the police interrogations, and the memory of a seven-month-old boy who never had a chance will remain a permanent, inescapable record of what truly happened in that silent house in Florida.