Parents Charged After 7-Year-Old Weighing 255 Pounds Dies From Heart Condition

GENESEE COUNTY, Mich. — Damien O’Brien, 40, and Jessica O’Brien, 41, face second-degree murder charges in the death of their 7-year-old son, Casper Jacob Shane O’Brien, who weighed 255 pounds at the time of his death from an obesity-related heart condition, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said. 

The couple is being held without bond at the Genesee County Jail, according to regional ABC affiliate WJRT. 

On Nov. 4, 2025, Flint Township police responded to a report of a child in distress at the family home. Casper was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died. 

The cause of death was dilated cardiomyopathy, described by the Mayo Clinic as a heart muscle disease that causes the heart chambers to thin, stretch and grow larger. The condition can be caused by obesity. 

Casper was just over 4 feet tall and weighed 255 pounds — well above the 50- to 73-pound healthy range cited by the CDC for someone of his age, height and sex.

“This is cruel and extreme suffering from this child caused by the neglect of the parents,” Leyton told the local outlet. “That’s obesity, and then you also have the fact that this child did not have a pediatrician, was only taken to the doctor, I believe, according to the police reports, once.”

Leyton said the O’Briens also have a 5-year-old daughter. The father has a “good job” and health insurance. 

On the morning Casper died, the parents allegedly called a veterinarian “to have their dog treated,” Leyton said. “None of these kids even existed in the eyes of the government,” Leyton continued, adding that child protective services had “never” been to the family’s home and “nobody knew about these kids.”

The defendants are scheduled to appear in court on July 2. 

Casper’s obituary described him as “a bright, loving young boy whose joyful spirit touched everyone around him.”