A heartbreaking video shows six-year-old Zymere Perkins playing with Play-Doh during a counseling session just five months before he was allegedly beaten to death by his mother’s ex-boyfriend, who admitted to ‘blacking out’ while hitting the child in 2016.
Zymere was killed on September 26, 2016. His stepfather, Rysheim Smith, currently faces second-degree murder charges in Zymere’s death and is on trial. Zymere’s mother, Geraldine Perkins, 29, has also been charged in her son’s death.
On Tuesday, jurors were showed a new video of Zymere while he was at the Manhattan Advocacy Center in April 2016 following a report of abuse.
He’s seen in the video sitting in a chair as a child welfare worker enters the room.
‘I have some Play-Doh Zymere, and some markers and paper. Do you like to draw too? Let me get you some more paper because it looks like someone drew on this,’ tells Zymere.
‘Do you wanna play with the Play-Doh while I go get the paper?’ the counselor asks.
‘I wanna play with Play-Doh,’ the child responds.
On Tuesday, jurors were showed a new video of Zymere (pictured) while he was at the Manhattan Advocacy Center in April 2016 following a report of abuse
‘Do you wanna play with the Play-Doh while I go get the paper?’ the counselor asks. ‘I wanna play with Play-Doh,’ the child responds
Zymere then presses the two balls of Play-Doh together as the counselor begins to gently speak to him
The video ends with Zymere molding the Play-Doh into a shape while the counselor explains to him why he’s there
She then takes the Play-Doh out of the containers and places it in front of him.
‘Is this right?’ Zymere asks the woman who told him: ‘It looks like they mixed it right. You can mix it.’
Zymere then presses the two balls of Play-Doh together as the counselor begins to gently speak to him.
The video ends with Zymere molding the Play-Doh into a shape while the counselor explains to him why he’s there.
The clip stemmed from a report filed with the city’s Administration of Children’s Services by one of his teachers who noticed him limping in school, according to the New York Daily News.
In May, a nurse at Public School 192 in Harlem, noticed a bump on Zymere’s head, which he said was a mosquito bite.
According to the Daily News, there were several serious allegations on abuse, but the city’s child welfare agency failed to intervene before his death.
It was also revealed on Tuesday that the child’s alleged killer, Smith, claimed that he ‘blacked out’ during the attack.
Smith, 45, reportedly told inmates at the Manhattan Detention Complex that he was prone to blacking out and beating people up.
It was also revealed on Tuesday that the child’s alleged killer, Smith, claimed that he ‘blacked out’ during the attack. Jerome Isaacs (pictured), an inmate at MDC, told the court that during a conversation in the lunchroom Smith told inmates ‘he snaps a lot and blacks out’
Rysheim Smith (left), 45, is currently on trial for allegedly beating to death Zymere Perkins (right)
Jerome Isaacs, an inmate at MDC, told the court that during a conversation in the lunchroom Smith told inmates ‘he snaps a lot and blacks out’, according the Daily News.
‘He described how he whooped him. He gave him an a** whooping. He said he found feces and maggots in the carpet,’ Isaacs testified on Tuesday.
‘This is why he blacked out and snapped, about that.’
Zymere was killed on September 26, 2016. As little Zymere lay dying on the ground having endured a heinous beating, his mother, Perkins, callously spent hours reading her bible, applying her make-up and then bathing her son’s lifeless body to rid it of blood before taking him to hospital.
The shocking admission was made by Perkins as she took to the stand for a third consecutive day last week to recount for jurors the horrific final moments of Zymere’s tragically short life, and how it was Smith who brought it to a brutal end.
Perkins said she stood idly by while Smith savagely battered her son with a broomstick and a shower rod before hanging him on the back of a bathroom door and throwing his body across the room inside their squalid 606 W. 135th Street apartment in Harlem.
‘He was going limp, like unresponsive,’ Perkins observed as she stood by allegedly watching Smith beat her son to death. ‘I figured he was just faking’
On September 25, 2016, the night before Zymere was killed, Perkins revealed that she and Smith gorged on Chinese take-out in-front of the starving six-year-old, who was forbidden food and water for 24 hours as a punishment – though Perkins says she can’t remember what for.
Zymere was killed on September 26, 2016. As little Zymere lay dying on the ground having endured a heinous beating, his mother, Geraldine Perkins (pictured, December 11), callously spent hours reading her bible, applying her make-up and then bathing her son’s lifeless body
Last week, jurors were shown a video of Perkins carrying Zymere’s lifeless body into St Luke’s Hospital with his arm swinging limply towards the ground
That night, Zymere curled up on the living room floor and went to sleep alone and unfed.
Hours later, Perkins would awake to hear a rummaging in the living room. At first she thought it was a mouse moving through the piles of trash littered throughout the home.
But when she emerged from her room she found that it was actually Zymere causing the noise, who, as it would turn out, had been so hungry that he was ‘going through the garbage [and] eating out of it’.
Perkins says she scolded the starving boy, snatched the trash bag out of his hands and went back to sleep.
The following morning, Smith discovered that Zymere had defecated in the living room and attempted to hide the mess. When Perkins raced out of bed to investigate the commotion she found her boyfriend towering over a terrified Zymere and poking him in the stomach with the sharp end of a broken broomstick.
‘He started to strike him with the broomstick, beating him from his chest to his legs with the broomstick,’ Perkins recalled.
‘Why the f**k did you take a s**t? Why did you take a f**king s**t in here? There’s a bathroom, you could have used the bathroom,’ Smith is said to have said to the boy with every vicious lashing.
On September 25, 2016, the night before Zymere was killed, Perkins (pictured on December 11) revealed that she and Smith gorged on Chinese take-out in-front of the starving six-year-old, who was forbidden food and water for 24 hours as a punishment
Smith discovered that Zymere had defecated in the living room and attempted to hide the mess. When Perkins raced out of bed to investigate the commotion she found her boyfriend towering over a terrified Zymere and poking him in the stomach with a broken broomstick
Authorities say Zymere was beaten to death with a broomstick and a shower rod before being hung on the back of a bathroom door and left to die in Smith’s squalid apartment in Harlem
Throughout the ordeal, Perkins said her son muttered not one word and just lay there shaking on the floor, with his underwear and shirt smeared in feces.
She theorized that her son decided to relieve himself in the living room because the apartment had no electricity and he was afraid to walk to the bathroom in the dark alone.
Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell asked the woman if she thought the beating was merited. Incredibly, she appeared to agree, replying: ‘I felt he was wrong for doing that in the living room.’
But the abuse intensified moments later, when Smith picked up a now-screaming Zymere from the floor and hauled him into the bathroom, where he waterboarded him, before yanking down the shower rod and unleashing another sickening beating.
‘He was going limp, like unresponsive,’ Perkins observed, failing to intervene or attempt to stop Smith. ‘I figured he was just faking.’
Perkins said Zymere had previously pretended to be unconscious in a bid to get Smith’s beatings to stop, so the couple were unfazed when Smith smacked Zymere across the back and he didn’t respond.
Smith then hung the unconscious boy on a hook, with his clothes dripping with cold water and blood. After a while, Perkins says Smith took her son down and threw him into an unused bedroom, where he landed between the wall and the bed.
Perkins said the boy ‘looked like he was dead’. Prosecutors say he most certainly was.
Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell asked the woman (pictured in 2014) if she thought the beating was merited. Incredibly, she appeared to agree, replying: ‘I felt he was wrong for doing that in the living room’
Smith hung the unconscious boy on a hook, with his clothes dripping with cold water and blood. After a while, Perkins says Smith took her son down and threw him into an unused bedroom, where he landed between the wall and the bed
Perkins testified on Monday that she resorted to prostitution in order to get money for food. She said she lied about being addicted to drugs so that she could gain entry into a shelter. She is seen above with Zymere in 2014
Smith ordered Perkins to clean up the apartment while he went out to get food. More than half-an-hour would pass before Perkins realized her son wasn’t breathing.
She sat there for the next few hours cleaning the apartment, the bedroom where Zymere’s body was thrown and read the bible.
Perkins made a feeble attempt to resuscitate her son with mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. She then bathed his body in the apartment’s filthy bath, laid him on a bed and waited for Smith to return.
‘I was hoping he’ll just wake up out of whatever was going on with him. I was just hoping he’ll get up,’ she told jurors.
When asked what she was thinking during those crucial moments, Perkins said: ‘[I was thinking] that my baby is dead, and I’m going to be in jail, and I’m in a lot of trouble.’
Smith eventually returned home hours later and ordered Perkins to take the boy out of their apartment through a back exit and lie if anyone asks where she’d come from.
He is said to have instructed her to tell any doctors or law enforcement that the boy had been sickened by food poisoning at a homeless shelter, emphasizing that she should make no mention of his Harlem address.
Perkins made a feeble attempt to resuscitate her son with mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. She then bathed his body in the apartment’s filthy bath, laid him on a bed and waited for Smith to return
Before leaving, however, Perkins spent 10 minutes applying her make-up and putting on a wig, telling the court her concern at that time was that she’s ‘very self-conscious about how I look outside’.
Jurors were shown a video of Perkins carrying Zymere’s lifeless body out of the building, with his right are swinging limply towards the ground.
Seconds later, a passerby helped flag down a taxi to take the mom and boy to Mount Sinai St Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan.
An autopsy revealed that Zymere had sustained more than 30 rib fractures and his entire body was covered in cuts, bruises and scars.
Perkins has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and agreed to cooperate against her ex-lover in exchange for two to six years in prison.
Smith faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder, manslaughter and other charges.