Kassceen Weaver (Chesterfield Police Dept.) and Eliel Adon Weaver (WRIC screenshot)
A 51-year-old Virginia man will spend more than a decade in prison for killing his 5-year-old son, then stashing the boy’s body in a freezer where it remained undetected for more than two years.
A state circuit court judge last week ordered Kassceen Weaver, a former basketball star at the University of Richmond, to serve a sentence of 20 years in a state correctional facility for the boy’s slaying, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
According to the state’s online court docket, Weaver was convicted by a jury on one count each of felony murder, felony child neglect, and concealing a dead body in connection with the slaying of young Eliel Adon Weaver.
Specifically, Weaver was sentenced to 20 years on the murder charge, 10 years on the child neglect charge, and five years on the concealment charge, with all running concurrent, meaning they will be served at the same time.
Eliel’s mother, Dina Weaver, was initially arrested and charged in connection to the boy’s death, but prosecutors later dropped those charges amid allegations that she too was the victim of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband.
While the boy’s remains were discovered in 2021, authorities say he was killed on Oct. 23, 2018, before Weaver stored his dead body in a freezer the family kept in their garage.
Authorities in May 2021 discovered the boy’s body in a freezer in the home Weaver shared with his wife and son. Both parents were charged in June 2021 with conspiring to conceal a body and were later released on bond. In addition to the charges related to his son’s body, Weaver was also charged with malicious wounding of a female and domestic assault and battery for allegedly abusing his wife. At the time, authorities said Weaver “manipulated” his wife who “suffered years of abuse at his hands.”
As previously reported by Law&Crime, the investigation into Weaver began when, before authorities discovered his son’s body, Weaver’s brother-in-law called police and reported “concerns” regarding his sister being in a “domestic violence situation.” The brother-in-law also told police that his sister had spoken to him about her “deceased son” and mentioned in May 2021 that the boy had died about two years ago.
Per the brother-in-law, his sister went on to say that Weaver had not called the police after their son’s death. Instead, she told her brother that Weaver had stuffed the body in their garage freezer “due to bruising” on his body. That information led to authorities obtaining a search warrant for Weaver’s home.
In court documents, prosecutors said investigators executing the warrant quickly uncovered the boy’s remains.
Authorities said they searched several freezers that were being kept in Weaver’s garage. Inside one of the freezers, they found a box containing human remains, which were later identified as Eliel. The remains were said to have been tied up using “twine,” then wrapped in adult clothing and stuffed inside of a tote bag. That tote bag was placed in a plastic container before being put in the freezer.
According to a report from Petersburg, Virginia ABC affiliate WRIC, Weaver’s wife testified under oath that on the night of her son’s death, Weaver telephoned her and said that their son had lost consciousness and stopped breathing. Per Weaver’s wife, Weaver claimed he attempted to perform CPR on the boy, but then refused to call for medical assistance when he failed to revive the boy. After realizing Eliel died, Weaver’s wife said that Weaver wrapped up their son’s body and stuffed him in their freezer.
Weaver had been facing a maximum of 55 years in prison.
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