A four year-old boy was seen on police bodycam footage with black eyes and bones protruding from his tiny body weeks before he died of starvation.
Benjamin Cevera looked hungry and frightened in a July 2021 clip shown to jurors at his father Brandon Cevera’s child abuse trial in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday.
The little boy – known as Benji – died less than a month later, weighing just 28 pounds. He is said to have been forced to drink hand sanitizer by his family and eat breadcrumbs off the floor of his family’s bathroom without using his hands.
In the footage, shared by KSAT, Benji’s dad and stepmom Miranda Casarez, 25, can be seen claiming to cops making a welfare call that the youngster self-harmed and caused the visible injuries.
Benjamin Cevera was seen looking hungry and frightened in a July 2021 clip shown to jurors
His father Brandon Cevera, is seen in police bodycam footage standing next to his child in 2021
‘He pokes his eyes and he pokes his ear,’ Brandon Cevera is filmed telling police.
Casarez, who was sentenced to 25 years prison earlier this year for abusing Benji, also piped up.
‘He has behavioral issues,’ she began. ‘He gets up at night and he goes into the kitchen and eats.’
A gauze is also seen stuck to one of Benji’s ears. Harrowingly, the little boy is filmed repeatedly asking his father for food, only to be refused.
Benji was the only member of his family who did not have a bed. He was made to sleep on a mattress with a urine-soaked blanket.
The youngster was locked in his room, with the house’s refrigerator and kitchen cabinets also padlocked to stop him getting food, the San Antonio-Express News reported.
Footage shown to the court then showed Benjamin being interviewed on his own by two San Antonio Police officers.
Benji was the only member of his family who did not have a bed. He was made 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
Shown his black eyes in the mirror and asked what happened to him, Benji says: ‘I poked them.’
Heartbreakingly, the trusting youngster was also filmed smiling at the two police officers dispatched to check on him.
Officer Omar Perez, one of the two cops 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 … able to see his bones.’
EMS called to the scene checked Benji’s vitals and said they were normal.
Perez told the court he was told to call child protective services and fill out a report.
He said he’d been told that would lead to an investigation of what was happening to Benji at a later date.
But 25 days later Benji was dead, two months shy of his fifth birthday. Cops and social services face questions over why Benji was left to die.
Brandon Cevera denies causing injury to a child and faces life in prison if convicted.
In early 2022, San Antonio cops obtained cellphone footage said to show Benji saying ‘I want food’ to his dad and begging for food and water.
The trial is set to resume on Monday.