‘How do you do that to a sweet boy?’

BREE COATES recalls the ice cream clutched in Zymere Perkins’ tiny right hand last year, the grin spread across the little boy’s beaming face.

Now the 6-year-old is dead, and Coates — a witness to the beatings heaped on the helpless child — wonders if she also bore witness to the doomed child’s few moments of joy.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Coates told the Daily News. “Everybody knew (his mother) used to beat on him . . . . I don’t understand why nobody did nothing. How do you do that to a little boy? He was a sweet little boy.”

“Zymere was scared to death. You could see it in his eyes, the fear in his eyes,” Coates added.

Coates was one of two women who contacted the Daily News on Wednesday with horrific tales of alleged abuse inflicted on the child by mom Geraldine Perkins and her hulking boyfriend Rysheim Smith.

Coates saw it with her own eyes, and Davana Miller (photo right) heard it directly from the boy’s mouth.

Both women claimed the city Administration for Children’s Services ignored their calls for help, leaving the boy to the heartless adults and their nightmarish beatdowns.

According to Miller, the cruel couple once left the sweet and shy boy alone with a group of drug addicts at a Harlem homeless shelter while they celebrated Geraldine’s birthday.

Miller, 26, recounted a haunting conversation in which Zymere told her about the constant assaults at home.

Miller got an order of protection and left Queens after Geraldine Perkins and Smith allegedly beat her senseless as retribution for her concern about Zymere.

The duo was outraged when Miller washed and fed Zymere while his mom and her boyfriend were partying for Geraldine’s July 2015 birthday, according to the victim.

“They jumped me and severely beat me in front of my (1-year-old) son, until my son couldn’t recognize my face,” said Miller, who lived alongside Zymere’s family at a Queens homeless shelter.

Coates, whose 4-year-old son was Zymere’s best buddy when they shared ice cream while living in a Harlem homeless shelter, said the child’s sense of terror was palpable.

“He was scared of his mother and he was scared of Rysheim,” she recalled.

“Every time he would see Rysheim, he would say, ‘Oh, don’t tell him, please don’t tell him I was being bad.’ ”