A 9-year-old boy was killed over a piece of birthday cake and now his uncle will pay

Before Jack Kirby Garcia, 9, was beaten to death for eating a piece of birthday cake last June, his uncle handcuffed him to the dining chair so he wouldn’t escape.

For the next several hours, according to authorities, Jacob Andrew Barajas was there while his nephew was punched in the stomach by his sister’s boyfriend and developed bruises all over his body. The boy was then left without medical attention for several hours until he stopped breathing.

He died a few days later at the hospital, eight days after his 9th birthday.

On Tuesday, Barajas pleaded guilty to child abuse for his role in Jack’s fatal beating, just before a jury was due to be selected for his trial. He had also been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death.

A few months before his death, he and his mother Oriana Iris Garcia moved in with her boyfriend Robert Leroy Wilson in March 2015, the Washington Post reported. According to CBS Baltimore, the two had met online, after Wilson had been charged with another case of child abuse in 2010 that was eventually dropped and expunged in a plea deal.

Garcia never enrolled her son in school after they moved into Wilson’s apartment in Hagerstown, Maryland, according to charging documents at the time. So for months before Jack died, his uncle, his mother and Wilson would keep the boy inside their apartment at all times, according to a prosecutor at Wilson’s trial.

Jack’s life became a cycle of regular beatings: Prosecutors said Wilson regularly hit Jack if he took food without permission, sometimes with his fists, sometimes with a bamboo sword, according to the Chicago Tribune. Barajas told police that all three of them also alternated between starving Jack and making Jack eat food until he became sick. Barajas also told police they had handcuffed him before to punish him for eating, the Washington Post reported.

The day he was fatally beaten, Jack —who had turned 9 three days before — took birthday cake that was supposed to be for Wilson’s child, Garcia later told police. The beating was because Jack “stole again” and needed to learn a lesson, according to police.

But it wasn’t until Jack started to have trouble breathing that someone called 911 — and Jack’s mother, who had just returned from her retail shift, sent them away, according to the Washington Post.

Her son was just “congested,” she told first responders, according to authorities’ retelling of the crime. They left without examining Jack.

During the next four hours, Garcia tried to give her son water, only to hear he “started gurgling when he would take a breath,” according to police reports. They called 911 again only when Jack stopped breathing.

Jack was taken to Children’s National Medical Center, where he died five days later.

All three were charged with child abuse. Wilson was convicted of second-degree murder in March of this year and sentenced to 30 years in prison, WBAL reported. Garcia, Jack’s mother, pleaded not guilty to all the charges against her and asked for a jury trial which is due to begin in February, according to WBAL.

Barajas faces up to 15 years in prison for pleading guilty.

When Wilson was sentenced, he told the judge he regretted his actions toward Jack, but that his girlfriend and her brother were also responsible for the boy’s death.

Washington County Circuit Judge M. Kenneth Long was unmoved, describing Wilson’s actions as torture, according to the Chicago Tribune.

"What a bleak existence this little person had," Long said at the time, according to the paper.

This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 12:41 PM with the headline "A 9-year-old boy was killed over a piece of birthday cake and now his uncle will pay."