HENDERSON, Nev. – A Nevada father is charged with murder after he reportedly told police he whipped his son to death because he didn’t approve of the TV show the boy was watching.
The youngster, General Sema’j Oglesby, 5, was discovered dead March 16 at about 1:30 a.m. After the brutal actions, Gerald Oglesby, 33, is facing homicide charges.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Gerald told police he whipped the five-year-old repeatedly with an electrical cord. Then, he dealt General an apparent fatal blow to the stomach.
“Gerald used a cell phone charging cord and hit him multiple times in the arms the back the abdomen and the side of his neck including his jawline,” according to the arrest report.
During the initial brutal whippings, Gerald reportedly caused the boy’s chin to split open and bleed.
The police report indicates the abusive father then gave General a shower before continuing the beating with the electrical cord, a slipper over his hand, and finally a blow to the child’s abdomen, reported the New York Post.
Law enforcement investigators wrote in the arrest report, “Gerald explained as soon as he struck (the child) in the abdomen, he knew he struck him too hard.”
Following the beating, the immobilized child laid down on the couch and vomited before he stopped breathing.
Gerald claimed he performed chest compression, but delayed calling 911. Once he was on the phone with an emergency dispatcher, he said General had not taken a breath in 13 minutes.
“Gerald did not call the paramedics or anyone else to see if he could get some help,” according to the police report. He instead went beside the boy, “rubbing his body for comfort.”
“Gerald stated he did not want to lose custody of (his son) and so he chose not to call to get help,” police wrote.
Prior to calling 911, the father sent text messages to the boy’s mother, Charlveena Veecee, as well as his sister.
Veecee received photos of the battered boy that had been on Gerald’s phone, while the man reportedly told his sister that he whipped General too hard.
Afterward, he smoked a joint and finally called 911, the arrest report said.
It further states that Gerald refused to perform CPR on his dying child when instructed to do so by the emergency dispatcher, the Post reported.
A downstairs resident at the complex said he heard repeated thumping noises for two hours on the evening of March 15.
Gerald faces one count of murder and has been jailed in Henderson, according to reports.
Las Vegas Justice Court records show Oglesby was arrested in September on a warrant and charged with three counts of domestic battery and one count of domestic battery by strangulation. However, the charges were dismissed two weeks after the arrest, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
According to the news outlet, further court records show in 2017 the boy’s mother filed for full custody of the child. Veecee argued that Oglesby’s girlfriend “threatens me and i honestly don’t trust her around my son.”
In 2021, the mother filed for partial custody. She wrote that she and Oglesby got along and she did not need him to pay child support, the Review-Journal noted.
