The grandmother of the 1-year-old boy, whose mother and her new boyfriend reportedly ki!!ed after being subjected to abuse, claims that she saw the mother beat her other children and doesn’t think the toddler’s death was an accident.
Sierra Rivers claims to be the paternal grandmother of 1-year-old Henry Wheatley Brown, who was discovered Sunday at a house in Sugarloaf, close to Big Bear, motionless and with severe burns. At a hospital, Henry was subsequently pronounced dead. Both Samantha Garver, 33, and Sergio Mena, 32, entered not-guilty pleas to the charges of m*rder and child abuse. They are detained without access to bail.
“You can’t tell me that woman with a past history of burning a child didn’t have a hand in burning that baby,” Rivers told Eyewitness News.
According to Rivers, Thomas Rios was the father of Henry and had a close to 20-year relationship with Garver.
Approximately ten years ago, according to Rivers, Rios was dating Garver and residing in the High Desert. She claims that this is when she saw child abuse in person. It implicated one of Garver’s other children; at the time, she was the mother of three other children.
Rivers claims to have seen Garver’s infant take a headphone out of his ear. “She slapped the crud out of that baby, and I yanked the baby away from her, and I told her ‘I’m calling the sheriff,'” Rivers recalled.
“‘You better call your foster mother and get her over here because I’m not going to give the baby back to anybody but the sheriff,'” Rivers remembered uttering. “And she grabbed the baby by the arm and yanked her out of my hand, and said ‘I got the s— beat out of me as a child, and I turned out fine.'”
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Soon after, Garver was arrested as a result of another incident. “She alleged that one of the girls, I’m assuming it was the youngest one, when it was a baby, rolled off the bed and was pinned between a space heater and the wall,” Rivers recalled.
But Rivers declined to accept it. “They got to the emergency room, (child protective services) was called in, and that’s when she lost the children,” Rivers explained. “So I don’t believe that it was an accident, I believed she probably burned that baby on purpose.”
According to court documents, Garver admitted guilt to misdemeanor child cruelty and received a 100-day jail term. A year-long child abuse prevention program was also required of her, and when she failed to comply, a warrant was issued for her arrest. After adopting the three kids, according to River, Garver’s mother relocated to Big Bear. Garver was living with them despite not being supposed to.
“Anytime CPS would come they’d hide her,” Rivers said. “They’d tell her you have to leave for a while, or they’d hide her in some other part of the house until they left.”
Rios and Garver were engaged a number of years ago, but she broke things up before Henry was due. Henry’s first birthday is not too far away. Sergio Mena and Garver started dating. Rivers claims she tried to alert San Bernardino County Children and Family Services at least 12 times that Henry might be in a perilous situation by calling them.
Mother in San Bernardino County arrested for her baby’s murder https://t.co/NmRZ1YLrrk
— KCAL News (@kcalnews) October 3, 2023
“There’s not a single picture of Henry smiling,” Rivers said. “His little eyes look dull, and tired and toward the end. He was so skinny and malnourished.”
“Do I think she intended to kill him? Do I think she intended to torture that baby until he died… yes, absolutely,” Rivers said. “I think she was tired of him. She had him later in life. She wanted to do her own thing and do her drugs, and he was interfering in it.”
But considering all the calls Rivers claims to have made, did San Bernardino County Children and Family Services ever launch a probe? According to the department, confidentially prevents them from disclosing that information at this time.