A four-year-old boy allegedly starved and beaten to death by his parents was so hungry he scavenged food from a school compost bin, a court heard.
Daniel Pelka later died looking like a 'concentration camp victim' after suffering months of ill-treatment at the hands of his Polish mother Magdelena Luczak, 27, and stepfather Mariusz Krezolek, 33, the jury was told.
The schoolboy was so hungry he would regularly scavenge food from other children and would eat fruit left in the classroom, it was claimed.
On Shrove Tuesday the pupils made pancakes and used some of the left-overs to do counting activities and races carrying them in frying pan. Afterwards, Birmingham Crown Court heard Daniel retrieved one, covered in grit, from the bin.
His teacher at Little Heath Primary School in Holbrooks, Coventry, Lisa Godfrey, said that on another occasion Daniel 'demolished' half of a chocolate cake during the lunch hour which she had planned to share with the class to celebrate her birthday.
Miss Godfrey told the jury yesterday that the young boy 'looked like an old man' before his death. On his final day at school he had winced when she playfully ruffled his hair.
Daniel is thought to have been killed in a ‘violent assault in his own home’ by one or both defendants during the following 48 hours.
A post mortem examination revealed he had suffered a blood clot on the brain at the time of his death, and he had 24 separate injuries across his body.
He weighed just 1.5st (10kg) - 15lb (7kg) below what would be expected – with a body mass index so low it was ‘off the scale’.
The jury were shown pictures charting the six months Daniel spent in the reception class of his primary school. Pictures taken in his first weeks showed a healthy looking boy. A picture taken at the start of Daniel’s final week showed him looking markedly thinner.
Schoolboy: Daniel, who weighed just 1.5st, was caught taking food from other pupils and once retreived a pancake covered in grit from the bin, the court heard
Miss Godfrey said that when the teacher discussed Daniel's determination to 'steal' food with his parents, they insisted Daniel had an eating disorder which gave him an insatiable appetite.
Struggling to maintain her composure as she recalled his final week at the school, the teacher said: ‘He looked sad. He looked like an old man.
‘I hadn’t seen him look that bad before. He was very, very thin (with) big black eyes. He was so pale I could almost see through him.
‘His eyes were sunken in to his head.’
Teacher Lisa Godfrey said that Daniel had the appearance of an 'old man' in the days before he died
She began sobbing as she added: ‘I spent a lot of my time with Daniel that week because he looked so sad, lonely and desperate and I didn’t know what else to do with him.’
She said she sat with him at lunchtime on his final day at school, after earlier stopping him from eating a pear she saw him retrieve from a playground bin. As usual, he ‘devoured’ his packed lunch and although 'subdued', he was alert and mobile.
The court heard that in January last year, two months before Daniel died, she had noted in a 'concerns book' how the child had bruises around his neck.
Mindful of Luczak's 'sharp temper', she told the jury she feared the marks could have been caused by his mother hitting or ‘trying to strangle him’. The following month, Daniel came to school with two black eyes and bruising across his nose, prompting her to go 'straight to the headteacher'.
The court heard that in the autumn term, Miss Godfrey had twice contacted Luczak over concerns about Daniel stealing food from children’s lunchboxes - which eventually caused her to lock them away in a cupboard – and his poor attendance.
When he returned to school after the Christmas holidays, she said he was noticeably 'thinner' than when he joined the school, with a 'large round tummy'.
She added: 'I remember saying once that when Daniel had a hat on he looked like a child that had leukaemia.’
Miss Godfrey, who no longer works at the school, said that following the February half-term, Daniel was 'even more placid than normal' and even more desperate for food.
'It was like he stopped caring (about being caught taking food)', she said.
'He wanted the food and he would get it without worrying who would see.'
Class teaching assistant Amy Tokely said Daniel, who had very limited English, wore smaller clothes than a lot of the children in the class.
After February half-term she said it was 'noticeable that his clothes were hanging off him and his attempts to get food became more desperate.'
Hungry schoolboy: Daniel, who went to Little Heath Primary School in Holbrooks, Coventry, pictured, repeatedly tried to take food from others, the court heard
Miss Tokely said Daniel would 'eat anything he could get his hands on'.
His lunchbox, she said, initially typically consisted of half a ham sandwich, a drink and a bag of crisps, although he was later given a full sandwich.
The jury has heard that both an education welfare officer and the school nurse visited Daniel at home during his time at school, and he was also seen by a consultant paediatrician, who gave his mother nutritional tablets. The tablets were opened but never used.
Luczak and Krezolek, an automotive worker, dialled 999 after claiming to have found Daniel unresponsive in his bed in the early hours of March 3. He was pronounced dead in hospital.
When police searched the three-bedroom family home in Coventry, they discovered Daniel had been locked in a box room akin to a ‘cell’, with no door handle.
Prosecutor Jonas Hankin QC told the court that Daniel had been 'subjected to a campaign of incomprehensible and escalating cruelty' by the defendants.
The couple, who came to the UK separately in 2006 and began a relationship four years later, deny murder and causing or allowing the death of a child.
The trial continues.
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