The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office Family Violence Unit on July 28, 2026 secured guilty pleas and convictions against defendants Sergio Mena and Samantha Garver, of Big Bear, for the 2023 death of one-year-old Henry Wheatley-Brown.
Young Wheatley-Brown died as a result of being severely scalded and being denied timely medical care after his mother’s live-in boyfriend left him in a bathtub with water believed to be above 130 degrees Fahrenheit (130°F) while he was reportedly smoking methampetamine.
The death of Wheatley-Brown, considered in conjunction with earlier reports of his mother’s abuse and neglect of his older siblings raised questions about the diligence and thoroughness of, and follow-through by, the San Beranrdino County Department of Children and Family Services.
The couple was arrested on October 1, 2023 after the Big Bear Fire Department responded to a home in the 700 block of Santa Barbara Avevue in Sugarloaf, where they found the 14-month old baby “suffering severe burns to his body,” according to a statement from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department released at that time.
Garver, now 36, was Henry’s mother. Mena, now 35, was Garver’s boyfriend.
On September 30, 2023, while Garver was out of the home working for a vacation home company in the area near Big Bear Lake, Mena placed Henry in a bathtub filled with what the district attorney’s office described as “scalding water” and left him unattended to engage in drug use. Henry began screaming, and Mena returned to find the child severely burned. He notified Garver, who returned home later that evening. Despite Henry’s extensive and life-threatening injuries, according to the district attorney’s office, neither defendant sought medical care, instead attempting to treat the burns with over-the-counter ointment.
The couple called 911 the following day, reporting that the young boy was having difficulty breathing, prosecutors said.
Responding paramedics found Wheatley-Brown “without a pulse, ice‑cold to the touch, and severely dehydrated,” according to the district attorney’s office. The child died from his injuries, and the death was ruled a homicide. Investigators ultimately determined the boy had been the victim of “ongoing physical abuse,” prosecutors stated.
“Henry had second- and third-degree burns, extensive bruising, petechiae in his eyes, and multiple healing fractures in both arms. Garver was aware of Henry’s injuries,” the district attorney’s office said.
According to scienceinsights.org, exposure to 140°F water can cause a third-degree burn in an adult in as little as five seconds and a second-degree burn in about three seconds. 130°F can result in an adult suffering third-degree burns in roughly 15-to-30 seconds and second-degree burns in about ten seconds. 120°F water canresult in adults sustaining third-degree burns in about five minutes and second-degree burns after ten minutes. 110°F water carries with it a minimal scald risk fro adults, requiring over an hour of continuous contact to reach that level of injury. Hot water transfers heat quickly to skin, causing rapid protein denaturation and tissue destruction. The “zone of coagulation” forms immediately at high temperatures, destroying skin layers in seconds. Children under the age of five have thinner skin and a higher body surface area-to-mass ratio that makes them more susceptible to scalding than adults. In a child, a third-degree burn at 140°F can occur in three seconds, according to biologyinsights.com.
Both Garver and Mena told child welfare investigators that Garver was not home when Henry suffered his fatal burns. It was Garver who informed investigators that Mena was using methamphetamine at the time of the burns. Mena said he did not purposefully injure the child. Henry Wheatley-Brown, whose biological father was Thomas Rios, had turned one-year-old in August 2023.
Garver did not summon paramedics with the Big Bear Fire Department to assist her son until more than 12 hours after the sclading occurred. Mena, in response to questions about burns on the child’s legs said they had resulted from the toddler being placed in a hot bath. Garver said the baby had been fine 40 minutes before paramedics arrived But the firefighters found the child cold to the touch and unresponsive. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“Through extensive investigation, it was discovered Wheatley Brown had additional injuries, indicating abuse,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release relating to the couple’s arrest.
An investigation into the circumstances of the Santa Barbara Avevue domicile where Garver and Mena were living and Garver’s history turned up issues that had been ignored and unaddressed, to Baby Wheatley-Brown’s ultimately fatal peril.
Garver had at least four and possibly five children. The first report about one of them being subjected to abuse had come into local authorities in 2009, when she was 19. Henry was the youngest of her children.
Over the years, family members and a babysitter had phoned the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Children and Family Services to report concerns about Garver’s children’s safety and isible injuries. One such report related to one of her other children having suffered severe burns in an incident in 2013, a decade before Henry’s death.
The San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services begged off when asked for comment regarding the matters involving Garver and her children.
The death of Henry did spark a more intense examination of the Garver household than had taken place previously. While it is not clear who interviewed Mena and Garver in the aftermath of Wheatley-Brown’s death, both said Garver was not home at the time Henry suffered the injuries that led to the complications that killed him, consisting of second-degree burns from his shins down to his feet as well as “isolated” second-degree burns on his genitals consistent with having been “dipped in hot water,” according the Department of Children and Family Services report that was completed less than a month after the child’s death.
The report, which was dated October 25, 2023, indicated Garner demonstrated a lack of maternal sensitivity.
“The mother allowed the child to suffer for several hours before he eventually died,” it stated.
Jeany Zepeda, the director of the San Bernardino Department of Children and Family Services in 2023 acknowledged that the system had failed Wheatley-Brown and that her office had come to the conclusion that “abuse or neglect led to the child’s death.”
There were repeated safety and welfare issues relating to the children under Garver’s roof. In some cases, though not all, what appeared to be appropriate responses to the situation were made. In virtually all of those entailing referrals, citations and court appearances, however, Garver appears to have slipped around the punishment meted out to, or the conditions imposed on, her.
The report noted that investigators and medical personnel determined Henry had earlier injuries that had gone untreated and unreported, including a dislocated arm and marks and bruises on his face. “The mother failed to seek medical attention for previous injuries that are indicative of possible physical abuse that occurred,” according to the report.
The Department of Children and Family Services first took note of problems relating to Garver’s parenting in 2009 and further instances of neglect were noted at various points thereafter. The following year, a referral came into the department when a doctor reported that she had said she sometimes, when one of her children “wouldn’t stop crying,” she “felt like putting a pillow over” the child’s head.
Garner was reported to the department again in 2013. At that point, Garver had a four-year-old, a two-year-old and an 8-month-old baby. Garver made a posting in a Facebook group chat in which she inquired about the advisability of using duct tape to prevent a child from crying and whether do so constituted abuse. In the same timeframe she made another Facebook posting in which she said her daughter had “blistered burns on her thighs” that came about when she was shopping and the child was under the care of a friend.
Garver posted on the Facebook page that she was afraid of Child and Family Service personnel, suggesting that was one of the reasons she was reluctant to bring her children to the hospital or a doctor for medical treatment.
Based, apparently, on that post and its reference to burns on Garver’s daughter, the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services carried out a child welfare check. When the presence of blisters was confirmed, Garver said they had come about when the baby somehow wedged herself between a wall and a heater.
Further inspection of the home found very unsanitary conditions at the home, including fecal matter smeared in the children’s bedroom and a cockroach infestation. The child was hospitalized and Garver was cited for felony child neglect, felony willful cruelty resulting in injury and leading potentially to death. After a go-round in court, those charges were dismissed, pursuant to Garver’s plea to misdemeanor cruelty to a child. She was given a 100 day sentence to be served in county jail, with the court giving her until July 2013 to make arrangements for the care of her children so she could begin serving her sentence. She did not report to jail that July and was listed as a fugitve from justice. No concerted effort to bring her into custody was made, however.
Despite Garver not having served her sentence, when the sheriff’s department and Children and Family Services Department personnel were called to her home on multiple occasions in the following years, she was not arrested and it is not clear what measures were taken to ensure her children’s safety.
After Henry’s birth, a report about Garver’s poor parenting skills was again made to the Department of Children and Family Services, apparently by Sierra Rivers, Henry’s grandmother. Children and Family Services sent an investigator to Garver’s premises on August 19, 2022. The investigator lodged a report that paradoxically made a finding that while the children were “safe” and “No safety threats are present,” they were at “high risk” of abuse and neglect.
Garver was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in state prison for voluntary manslaughter and child abuse causing great bodily injury.
Mena pled guilty to second-degree murder and child abuse causing great bodily injury. He received a prison term of 21 years to life.
The case was prosecuted by the district attorney’s Family Violence Unit.