A difficult day in court as closing arguments were made in the Zymere Perkins murder trial.
Jurors had to relive very painful images of a child that prosecutors say was “beaten like a pinata.”
Prosecutors say that Rysheim Smith is the man responsible. He was Perkins’ mother’s boyfriend.
The child was six years old when he suffered his last beating in September 2016, Smith allegedly using a broom handle and shower curtain rod to brutalize Zymere, before hanging the dying boy on the back of a bathroom door in the family’s Harlem apartment.
The Administration for Children’s Services had opened five investigations on the family, based on calls from Zymere’s teachers and neighbors.
The defense tried to shift the blame onto Perkins’ mother, Geraldine.
The child had gone to school with a broken jaw, busted teeth, and fractured ribs.
The judge is expected to charge the jury tomorrow. They will have the day to deliberate.
