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Brandon Grant, 39, died on Sunday, Jan. 14 at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest from pulmonary thromboemboli due to deep vein thrombosis and complications from burns to his back, according to officials.
The death was ruled accidental following an autopsy on Tuesday, Jan. 16, said Coroner Daniel Buglio.
Grant was serving a sentence at SCI Phoenix in Collegeville, the coroner said.
Prison staff told Daily Voice that Grant was burned while "using a homemade stinger device to boil water in his cell" on Jan. 3. They said he was serving a 2-to 5-year sentence for a drug conviction from Philadelphia County and had been in SCI Phoenix since 2021.
According to court records, Grant was sentenced to eight to 16 years in 2020 after pleading no contest to aggravated assault on a person under 13 in a Delaware County court.
An appeal filed in 2021 and obtained by Daily Voice revealed that the victim was his then 3-month-old daughter whom he claimed had rolled out of bed and hit the hardwood floor on Nov. 15, 2018.
While she was at Delaware County Memorial Hospital it was discovered that she had "a punctured lung and bruises on the mid to lower back and buttocks," as stated in the appeal. Her injuries were so extreme that she was transferred to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
The doctors at CHOP noted that the baby girl "exhibited acute mental status changes, respiratory distress, and bloody secretions." She was soon "diagnosed with pneumomediastinum (a condition in which air is present in the mediastinum or the space in the chest between the two lungs), periportal edema, and extensive pattern bruising to [the back, flank, and buttocks]" and doctors explained this could not have happened from a fall but only from "inflicted blunt force trauma."
The appeal was denied, in part because the commonwealth could "sustain its burden of proof" through the above information that was part of a larger affidavit of probable cause.
He previously pleaded guilty to simple assault and resisting arrest in 2004, as well as felony drug possession with intent to deliver and corruption of minors in 2009, records show.
In 2013, he was sentenced to 40 months to 2 years after taking a plea deal in a felony robbery case, according to his court summary on the state website.
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