Sedrick Johnson, 33, was found guilty last week in the death of the 18-month-old nephew of his girlfriend.
DALLAS — A 33-year-old Dallas man was sentenced to 20 years in prison last week in connection with a case involving an 18-month-old boy whose body was found in a landfill in 2019, officials say.
The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the sentencing of Sedrick Johnson, who was found guilty last week of injury to a child by omission.
Chrystal Jackson, the boy’s aunt, was arrested in July 2019 on a felony endangerment charge, a week after Johnson was accused of harming him. She is accused of lying for hours about what happened to her nephew, Cedric “CJ” Jackson. Jackson claimed CJ had been abducted from her Dallas apartment.
The missing child report triggered a statewide Amber Alert. The toddler’s body was found in a Rowlett landfill a day after he was reported missing.
A police affidavit indicates that CJ might have been alive when Johnson took him from the apartment and put him in a Dumpster.
Had Jackson been truthful with police sooner, “law enforcement has every reason to believe the complainant could have been located, potentially alive, within hours of his removal from suspect Jackson’s residence,” according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
Johnson, Jackson’s boyfriend, told police that the boy was unconscious after being tightly swaddled in a blanket at the foot of the couple’s bed, police records show.
He said he started routinely swaddling CJ after the boy once “made a mess” in the middle of the night with ketchup packets. The man said he didn’t want the child getting up during the night, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Jackson initially told police she put her nephew to bed around 11 p.m., and the boy was gone when she woke up the morning of July 10.
She later said she woke up in the middle of the night to find her boyfriend and nephew missing from the apartment. A search warrant for Johnson’s cellphone indicates Jackson claimed she called him to ask where he was.
The boyfriend told police that he woke up around 12:30 a.m. July 10, when the toddler started making noise. He said the boy started throwing up after Johnson unwrapped CJ from the swaddle, records show.
The toddler was unresponsive and didn’t wake up after Johnson performed CPR, the man told police, according to an affidavit. He dropped the boy in a Dumpster in northeast Dallas.
Police said the Dumpster had been emptied twice before they found the boy’s body in the landfill.
It’s unclear if the child was already dead when he was thrown away.
CJ was put with Jackson after he was removed from his parents’ custody. After the toddler’s death, six children were taken from Johnson and Jackson’s home and put in foster care, said officials with Child Protective Services.