Father acquitted in son's starvation case vows life changes
Brandon Cereva, the man who was on trial and found not guilty for starving his 4-year-old son Benjamin, is a free man. He gave an interview and talked about the regrets he still has.
"I never got to tell Benjamin that day that I loved him, and I'm going to regret that for the rest of my life," says Brandon Cervera.
Fighting back tears, Cervera says he's going to live life differently now.
"My mistake was focusing a lot on work and being that provider, when I should have been there for my kids more," says Cervera.
After a seven-day trial and about seven hours of deliberation, Cervera was found 'not guilty' by a jury of his peers. He wants the public to know he's a hard-working dad who loves his kids. He still has two kids; a son who's in middle school, and a daughter he had with Miranda Casarez. She's Benji's stepmom and was sentenced to 25 years in prison last April.
"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," says Casarez.
He says months before Benji's death, his relationship with Casarez was changing. Cervera never thought she would hurt Benji.
"I was already on the verge of leaving her. We already had so many arguments about how she treated my son," says Casarez.
Benji fell victim in August of 2021 and sentenced Casarez to 25 years in prison for Benji's 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," says Casarez.
"There was this battle of wills between Miranda and a child with special needs and she did something potentially to the child that we will never know," says Cervera's attorney Jodi Soyars.
Soyars says the trial should have never been about a father starving Benji. She says locks shown by prosecutors allowed people to jump to conclusions.
"The fact that they're present doesn't mean they're used, and I think the state was using that to prove the child had been deprived of food and it's not because he's not provided food, it's that he had this excessive hunger," says Soyars.
Cervera says he's in therapy and won't rest until he finds out how Benji died.
Six months after Benji's death, the Bexar County Medical Examiner's office ruled his death as starvation-related.
The Bexar County District's Attorney's office says in part, 'We respect the very difficult decision made by the jury in this case. Our hearts go out to the family. This community will not forget his tragically, un-timely loss."
