Zymere’s mom ‘just as guilty’

Same blame as her beau: DA

Six-year-old Zymere Perkins’ mom and her boyfriend are “equally responsible” for his “depraved” slaying, Manhattan prosecutors said Monday during closing arguments in the boyfriend’s murder trial.

Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell said that while Rysheim Smith faces life in prison for the boy’s fatal 2016 beating, his mother, Geraldine Perkins, is just as responsible for his death — although prosecutors gave her a generous plea deal.

“Rysheim and Geraldine are both equally responsible for his depraved murder,” O’Connell told the Manhattan Supreme Court jury.

Perkins, 29, agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and to testify against Smith in exchange a more lenient prison sentence of two to six years. She’s already served three.

But prosecutors Monday argued that Smith, 49, is the one who inflicted the damage that killed the boy inside the family’s unkempt Harlem apartment Sept. 26, 2016, while Perkins did nothing to stop him.

Prosecutors alleged that Smith bludgeoned the malnourished Zymere with a broomstick, shoved him under a cold shower and then hung him, wet and unconscious, on a hook, before throwing him against a wall.

“Was he aware of the grave risk of physical injury?” O’Connell said. “Who could not be aware of that? Look at the kid’s body.”

An autopsy revealed the boy had more than 30 rib fractures.

The prosecutor argued that Perkins was physically incapable of inflicting the damage done to Zymere.

But in his own closing, Smith’s lawyer argued that Perkins was the real killer who was pointing the finger at her boyfriend to save her own skin.

Defense attorney Arnold Levine alleged the mom couldn’t handle her hyperactive son, and worried he would ruin her relationship with Smith.

“Rysheim cared whether that little boy lived or died that day,” Levine added. “She did not. She killed her little boy.”

The Administration for Children’s Services had five prior investigations into alleged abuse of Zymere when he died, and the tragic case sparked an outcry about failings in the city’s child services system.

The jury is scheduled to begin deliberations Tuesday.