Texas Man Found ‘Not Guilty’ After Allegations Of Starving 4-Year-Old Son To Death

A Texas man was on trial for starving his 4-year-old son Benjamin. After a week-long trial and seven hours of deliberation, Brandon Cervera was found not guilty.

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News 4 reported that Benjamin's stepmom, Miranda Casarez, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April of 2023. Cervera said, "I’m not with my kids for 8 to 10 hours of the day. I don’t know what exactly is going on in the middle of the day," implying that he was not aware of abuse going on at home while he was at work every day.

The community found this hard to believe when photos of Benjamin with two black eyes surfaced. Police officer question the child asking him how his eyes got like that to which he answered "I poked them."

According to Cervera his relationship with Benjamin's step mom was starting to get rocky months prior to his son's death,"I was already on the verge of leaving her. We already had so many arguments about how she treated my son."

Benjamin passed away in August of 2021 and Casarez was sentenced to prison for his death.

"I got the call at 10:45 in the morning that my son was unresponsive, then I drove like a madman to Santa Rosa and at 11:32 is when they stopped working on him."

Cervera's attorney says that the trial 'should never have been about Benjamin being starved' claiming that photos of the locks on the kitchen cabinets shown by prosecutors fueled a false narrative that he was being starved.

A video shows Benjamin begging for food, contributing to the assumption that he was not feeding his son effeciently. However, Benjamin, also known as Benji, had special needs and, according to Soyars, had "excessive hunger."

Casarez talked about his regrets and his plans to continue to work on himself in therapy during an interview, sharing that he "never got to tell Benjamin that day that I loved him, and I’m going to regret that for the rest of my life."

He blames himself for focusing too much on work instead of on being Benji's provider, "I should have been there for my kids more."

He shared that he won't rest until Benji's he knows how Benji died.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Benji's death as starvation-related.