Monica Sherrod says she thought Cash Gernon was playing hide and seek with her after the boy had been kidnapped
DALLAS, TEXAS: Murdered toddler Cash Gernon's immediate caretaker was Monica Sherrod — a woman his father Trevor Gernon dated before he disappeared in March. Ever since, Sherrod has been reportedly taking care of the two boys along with her other four children. Cash was kidnapped from his bedroom which was at the far end of the six-bedroom house owned by Sherrod, where the suspect broke in through the back door.
The kidnapper could be seen returning for Cash's twin brother Carter Gernon at daybreak, two hours after he took Cash from the same room. Sherrod and her family still didn't realize there was a break-in at their home, and when they woke up later in the day and didn't see Cash in his bed, they assumed the boy was playing hide-and-seek. By then Cash's body had already been found in the middle of the street, in a pool of blood, dead from multiple stab wounds. Speaking to Daily Mail, Sherrod broke down recalling how she struggled to believe that reports of a dead toddler found in the area were actually about the boy she was allegedly raising as her own.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Cash had been living with Sherrod ever since his father Trevor had moved into Sherrod's home on February 14 this year. The construction worker subsequently got into trouble with legal matters and took off without informing the boys' mother Melinda Seaggroves or allegedly informing Sherrod about his plans. The twins had stayed with Sherrod temporarily before their father abandoned them with her and had grown to refer to her as their 'mom', Sherrod tells the outlet.
Recalling the nightmare on the day she woke up to find Cash missing from his bed, Sherrod told the outlet "The day that he was missing, I got up late and thought it was weird. I was like, it's 10 o'clock already, you guys. So I figured Cash was still in bed." She then goes on to detail how Carter was the reason she thought Cash was just out playing games with them. "Carter goes, 'he went outside'. So we believed Carter. I started screaming, 'Cash, if you're hiding from mommy it's not funny anymore. Come out it's time for breakfast'. He wouldn't answer."
That's when Sherrod's sons began frantically looking for the boy, yelling his name. "He wasn't answering and I knew something was wrong. I called 911… they [asked] when did I notice he was gone. I said immediately when I got up, when Carter woke me up. I didn't even think about the surveillance system." Soon reports came in of a body being found but Sherrod still refused to believe it was about Cash, who had been found by a passing jogger that same morning, at 6.40 am.
"I was crying and confused and in a million pieces and praying they would still find Cash and that that little boy wasn't Cash," Sherrod told the outlet, adding "I kept telling my daughter, that's not Cash. And she said, 'mommy, it has to be'." The family soon realized they have access to surveillance footage in the boy's room and when they took that to the detective, the horrifying truth was revealed. "My son Matthew was the last to be interviewed. He remembered all of a sudden, 'mom has cameras'. When you're going through something like that… all you think about is your baby that's missing. And when they said mom has cameras I rewinded the cameras and there he was, the boy, taking my son out of his bed."
Sherrod said "I freaked out. I was devastated. I started screaming. Because my daughter kept telling me, 'Mom, somebody did this. Mom, somebody did this to our baby'. And I'm like, no, no they didn't. He's going to be found." Breaking down into tears, Sherrod then reveals "And they did. They did do it. They took him. Why would they hurt him? He was four. He was like this big, he was so little. He wasn't even the size of a four-year-old. He was so tiny."
Speaking about the ongoing social media speculation about Sherrod's involvement in the crime, she told the outlet "I waited so many days to go to where Cash was found. That's because everybody was bombarding me, and my baby just died. I have been receiving a lot of hate online. People are telling me it is my fault Cash died. I didn't want to be publicized as a monster. I'm not. My kids are my life."
Brown has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and burglary, currently being held on a $150,000 bond. Additional charges are expected to be slammed once further forensic test results come in.