A four-year-old boy with black eyes and bones protruding from his tiny body was seen on police body camera footage weeks before he starved to death.
Benjamin Cevera appeared hungry and scared in a July 2021 clip shown to jurors in his father Brandon Cevera’s child abuse trial in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday.
The boy, known as Benji, died less than a month later, weighing just 28 pounds. His family is said to have forced him to drink hand sanitizer and eat breadcrumbs off the floor of his family’s bathroom without using his hands.
In the footage, shared by KSATBenji’s father and stepmother, Miranda Casarez, 25, can be seen telling police officers making a welfare call that the young man self-harmed and caused visible injuries.
Benjamín Cevera was seen hungry and scared in a July 2021 clip shown to the jury.
His father, Brandon Cevera, appears in police body camera footage with his son in 2021.
“He peeks his eyes out and his ear peeks out,” Brandon Cevera is recorded telling police.
Casarez, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year for abusing Benji, also spoke.
“He has behavioral problems,” he began. “He gets up at night, goes to the kitchen and eats.”
A piece of gauze is also seen stuck to one of Benji’s ears. Heartbreakingly, the boy is filmed repeatedly asking his father for food, only to be rejected.
Benji was the only member of his family who didn’t have a bed. They forced him to sleep on a mattress with a urine-soaked blanket.
The young man was locked in his room, with the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets of the house also padlocked to prevent him from getting food, the San Antonio-Express News reported.
Footage shown to the court showed Benjamin being interviewed alone by two San Antonio police officers.
Benji was the only member of his family who didn’t have a bed. They forced him to sleep on a mattress with a urine-soaked blanket.
Brandon Cevera denies causing injury to a child and faces life in prison if convicted
Ex-wife Miranda Casarez has already been sentenced to 25 years behind bars
When shown his black eyes in the mirror and asked what happened to him, Benji says, “I touched them.”
Heartbreakingly, the confident young man was also filmed smiling at the two police officers sent to check on him.
Officer Omar Perez, one of the two police officers who made the welfare call, told the court that Benji “had visible injuries.”
Perez added: “He had bruises on his eyes and torso and he was skinny…I could see his bones.”
Emergency medical services called to the scene checked Benji’s vital signs and said they were normal.
Perez told the court she was told to call child protective services and fill out a report.
He said he had been told that would lead to an investigation into what was happening to Benji at a later date.
But 25 days later, Benji was dead, two months before his fifth birthday. Police and social services are facing questions about why they let Benji die.
Brandon Cevera denies causing harm to a child and faces life in prison if convicted.
In early 2022, San Antonio police obtained cell phone footage that showed Benji saying “I want food” to his father and begging for food and water.
The trial will resume on Monday.