A Texas stepmother has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the starvation death of a four-year-old boy, whom she filmed sobbing and begging for bread the morning of his passing.
Miranda Casarez, 25, maintained a stoic demeanor and denied responsibility for Benjamin Cervera’s demise even during sentencing. Her legal team pleaded for leniency, highlighting that Casarez is the mother of a three-month-old child whom she breastfed throughout the trial.
Benjamin, tragically, weighed only 28 pounds when he succumbed to agony on August 17, 2021. The cruel stepmother subjected him to drinking urine, hand sanitizer, and hot sauce before his death, just a month before his fifth birthday.
“I hope instead of laughing you hear my son’s cries,” expressed Amy Flores Zepeda, speaking on behalf of her sister, Benji’s birth mother, as reported by San Antonio Express News.
Casarez was found guilty of causing injury to a child with serious bodily harm. His father, Brandon Cervera Sr., awaits trial next month. During the trial, jurors were shown distressing images of Benjamin crying and pleading for food.
In one video, a tearful Benjamin in the backseat of a car begs, “I want bread,” mere hours before he was hospitalized and subsequently died, likely from starvation.
Jurors also learned that Casarez had sent text messages to her mother admitting to deliberately withholding food from the boy, according to Law and Crime.
At her sentencing, Casarez begged for leniency, shifting blame to the boy’s father for the abuse. Benjamin passed away at San Antonio Children’s Hospital shortly after his father rushed him there, unconscious and displaying signs of abuse. Despite medical efforts to resuscitate him, Benjamin was pronounced dead.
Casarez’s attorneys sought a shorter sentence to allow her to apply for probation, but this request was denied.
