What Happened to Lamar Odom’s Son Jayden? Inside His Tragic Death

Lamar Odom is returning to the spotlight on Season 6 of The Kardashians. Previews for the upcoming season of the famous family’s show reveal that the NBA star will reunite with Khloé Kardashian on-camera eight years after their divorce was finalized in December 2016.

Odom’s troubled past has been documented, but long before his reality television fame, he dealt with a horrific family tragedy that still affects him to this day. In 2006, Odom’s son Jayden died. Scroll down for everything we know about his death and the aftermath.

How did Lamar Odom’s son die?

Jayden died from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which is “the unexplained death of a baby,” according to Mayo Clinic. “The baby is usually less than a year old and seems to be healthy. It often happens during sleep.” The cause is unknown.

Odom was playing for the Los Angeles Lakers at the time of his son’s passing, although basketball was not in-season. “Lamar is very distraught,” the team’s spokesman told ESPN at the time. “Both he and the baby’s mother are asking that people respect their privacy at this time.”

In 2017, Odom recalled the night his son died, telling the New Zealand Herald that he was “out partying all night and hadn’t gone home” when he received the shocking phone call. “He was at home in his crib. I should’ve been at home with him. But I was out, doing whatever,” Odom shared.

 

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He continued, “Early in the morning, I got a call from his mother. She was panicking. I was like, ‘Yo, calm down. What’s wrong?’ And she said, ‘Jayden … he won’t wake up. The ambulance is here. They’re taking him now.'”

Odom had to travel from Manhattan to Long Island to get to the hospital. “The doctor just told me that, you know, ‘He’s not responding.’ They said, ‘He’s gone,'” he recounted. “I [had] just seen him. Gone? How the f**k is that even possible. How can he be gone?”

While appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in 2022, Odom told his castmates, “There’s just something I don’t think I’d ever get over. But him coming to me in a dream lets me know that he’s not too far away. And I know I’ll see him in an afterlife.”

Who is the mother of Lamar Odom’s son?

Jayden’s mother is Odom’s ex-girlfriend Liza Morales. Odom and Morales were high school sweethearts. They started dating in 1996 while attending Christ the King High School in Queens, New York. They never tied the knot and split at some point after Jayden’s death in 2006.

Morales was the one to find Jayden dead in his crib. She said she checked on him in the morning and saw him lying on his stomach. Morales, thinking her son was asleep, went downstairs for breakfast, but had a “sudden panic wash over her,” she told PEOPLE. When she ran back upstairs, she saw that his face was blue and he wasn’t breathing.

Odom recalled, “I walked into the hospital room and the hurt on his mother’s face … I’ll never forget that. How she couldn’t believe it. Six months old. Gone.”

 

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Morales said she struggled with anxiety and depression after Jayden’s death, which she’s described as the breaking point in her relationship with Odom, who fell deeper into drug use following the tragedy. “I realized I lost Lamar when our son Jayden passed away,” Morales told Page Six. “We grieved so differently.”

In his New Zealand Herald interview, Odom explained, “I think everything probably picked up at that point, with the drugs. Even subconsciously. You don’t even know why you’re doing it at that point. I think subconsciously, you make yourself an addict because of the trauma that you’re going through.”

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In 2019, Morales opened up to Us Weekly about how her relationship with Odom changed after his near-fatal overdose in 2015. “We definitely went through a rocky stage, but I think after the incident in Vegas and coming so close to Lamar almost dying, I feel like I really had to come to a point in our relationship and in coparenting of, ‘You know what? I also have to forgive him for so much and just have more empathy for him,’” she said.

Jayden was Odom and Morales’ youngest child. Their daughter, Destiny, was born in August 1998, followed by Lamar Jr. in 2002. He and Kardashian never had any children together.

The Kardashians, Season 6 Premiere, Thursday, February 6, 12a ET/9p PT, Hulu

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