Horror relived at Zymere trial
Six-year-old Zymere Perkins was beaten, starved and tortured by his mother’s boyfriend for more than a year as she stood by silently — until the little boy finally gave up, prosecutors argued on Monday.
“He died almost one cell at a time,” said Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell in her heartbreaking opening statements as the Manhattan Supreme Court trial of Rysheim Smith began.
Smith, who had met mom Geraldine Perkins 16 months earlier, called his tactics discipline and said the abuse “would make a man out of a little boy,” O’Connell alleged.
The prosecutor detailed the little boy’s final agonizing hours on Sept. 26, 2016, when Smith, 45, allegedly grew enraged at the malnourished child.
“He picked up Zymere, held him by the arm and began to beat him with a stick like he was a little piñata,” she told the jury. “Tellingly, he did not call out to his mother . . . because he knew his mother was not going to protect him.”
Smith then dumped the child under a cold shower — while his mom looked on passively, the prosecutor alleged.
After Zymere lost consciousness, Smith allegedly bludgeoned him with a shower curtain rod before hanging the boy in his wet clothes on a hook.
O’Connell said this was likely “where he took his last breath.”
Eventually, Smith threw Zymere into a bedroom wall, where he crumpled to the floor, she alleged. When Perkins, 29, checked on Zymere hours later, he was already dead.
An autopsy would later reveal that he had more rib fractures than ribs, the prosecutor said.
Zymere’s death exposed stunning failures at the Administration for Children’s Services. The agency had previously launched five separate investigations into allegations of abuse against the Harlem boy but failed to intervene or follow up.
ACS boss Gladys Carrion resigned and Gov. Cuomo appointed a monitor to oversee the agency.
Perkins eventually cooperated with authorities, pleading guilty to manslaughter and agreeing to testify against Smith.
Defense lawyer Heather Smith argued Monday that Zymere “suffered more than anyone should ever have to suffer in their life,” but that it was at the hands of his own mother, not Smith.
The attorney called Perkins “a known liar with every incentive to lie to save her own life.”
Smith faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges.