ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Investigators say 8-year-old Lavares Key was killed over a dessert. His 13-year-old brother, Demetrius Key, is being held in juvenile detention on first-degree murder charges.

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RAW INTERVIEW: Victim's Guardian Talks About Murder

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The arrest report details a confession by the 13-year-old that he beat his brother in the head with a metal bracket and then punched, kicked and choked him, before finally smashing his head on the ground until he passed out.

Penny Blackmon is the woman Lavares Key really considered mom. Wednesday, she surrounded herself with images of the boy she's raised since he was an infant.

"I'm just going to look at it like he didn't really mean to do it," Blackmon said.

Since Saturday, she's heard rumors of the brutal beating Lavares took at the hands of his brother.

"Well, the boy was beaten to death," explained Orange County Sheriff's Sgt. John Allen during a Wednesday media briefing.

Investigators found no way to sugar coat what has happened to Lavares in recent months, after his biological mother failed to return him to his home after a June visit.

"At this point, we're still trying to determine exactly how long he had been living with her. Within a month after giving birth, she gave him to someone she described as his godmother and that lady had raised him for eight years," Allen said.

That lady, Penny Blackmon, is now caught in an investigation that prevents her from even planning a funeral and she is left in tears from details of a brutal beating that happened while a half-dozen children were left home with 13-year-old Demetrius in an apartment.

Neighbors said Lavares was never allowed out of the small Texas Avenue apartment, seen for the first time by many as the dying boy was taken away Saturday. The reason for the violent rage that killed Lavares, according to detectives, was the would-be third grader ate a dessert he wasn't supposed to eat and his brother thought he would be blamed for it.

"I want justice, but Demetrius is a kid, too," Blackmon said.

"He had fresh injuries and he had old injuries. The child had suffered multiple injuries and, at this point, we're still looking into how some of those other injuries had occurred, where they occurred and who might have inflicted them," Allen said.

Neighbors believe the boy was regularly beaten and kept from view because his legal guardian, and godmother, was searching for him. Residents of the Beach Club Apartments said Tangela Key, the boy's biological mother, even tried to keep them from calling 911 as the boy slowly died of a massive head wound, the final blow ending a months-long nightmare for the boy.

"It certainly appears at this point the child has been beaten over a long period of time," Allen said.

Demetrius is charged with first-degree murder, but questions about Lavares' injuries remain and now the investigation turns to Tangela Key, a woman believed to have nearly a dozen children.