DALLAS – Police say a missing 11-year-old Dallas boy slowly starved to death after his parents locked him in his bedroom, feeding him just bread and water.

Police received a call on Friday from the grandfather of Johnathan Ramsey, who was concerned about his grandson because he had not seen him for at least nine months and possibly as long as a year, myFOXdfw.com reported.

During interviews with the child's father and stepmother, police received conflicting accounts of what happened to the boy.

The questioning led police to believe the child had died and search teams on Saturday began looking for his remains in a large field.

The father, 34-year-old Aaron Ramsey, and the stepmother, 31-year-old Elizabeth Ramsey, were arrested and charged with first-degree felony charges of injury to a child. They remained in custody Sunday, with bail set at $500,000 each.

Police records reveal that in the last few months of Johnathan's life he was locked in his bedroom and fed "military rations" -- bread, water and occasionally milk -- as punishment for bad behavior, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Aaron Ramsey, who once served in the military, told police that his son had begun acting in a violent manner early last year, including punching his stepmother in the stomach, causing her to have a miscarriage.

After that incident he hit the child and locked him in his bedroom, where he remained until his death, slowly withering from 90 pounds to about 60 pounds between March and August last year.

Elizabeth Ramsey described the boy as "looking like one of those kids you see on commercials from Africa," in interviews with police. She described him "as being really thin and explained that he was unable to walk at times due to loss of strength."

Aaron Ramsay said sometime in August last year he found the boy unresponsive on the floor of his bedroom and, after washing his body, placed him in a sleeping bag before dumping the body in a storm shelter of a vacant house nearby.

Later he dumped the boy's body in a wooded area -- leading to the search Saturday, which was called off about 5:00pm local time without anything being found.

Johnathan's biological mother lives in New Mexico. Police said she was notified by detectives about the search for her son and that she, too, had trouble getting straight answers from the boy's father about where he was.

"Whenever she contacted the father, he would give a reason of where the child was," Deputy Chief Sherryl Scott told myFOXdfw.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/01/missing-11-year-old-starved-to-death-in-locked-bedroom-dallas-police-say/#ixzz1quLwNNmC

People just make me sick.

what a tragedy

two children lost through violence and/or deprivation,,,

Hope they'll be put on the same Rations for the rest of their Lives!

I graduated with Aaron. We went out a couple of times as friends after I'd moved back to Ennis, 7 years ago. He always talked about his son. I'm still trying to work my head around this. Totally floored and appalled!

Awww ED, how awful when you know someone.

Yep! That's basically how I feel, twitch and all!

Time for ol sparky to do a double tap

Yup, yup!

To quick and painless for people like this.

I Wonder if he had starved from eating only oatmeal,, if the outrage would be the same

its tragic anyhow, that parents can be so ignorant about childrens needs,,,many more than this couple arent aware of dietary needs,, but this ended tragicly

The boy went from 90 pounds to 60 pounds. The parents were not ignorant of his dietary needs. They knew they were starving him.

I dont know if thats true. I think ignorance is quite possible because I saw something similar with a couple who had only fed their child oatmeal,,because they thought it was healthy enough, and he was simialrly losing weight.

I think they went to a hospital before he had lost thirty pounds, but he had dropped about fifteen. They could have been this couple had they waited just a few days longer to seek help.....ignorance

Sorry, they were doing this as a form of punishment. It went to far. Doesn't matter if it's bread, oatmeal, grits, or what, it's still wrong.

Someone thinking of diet issues is a different story. Maybe not right, but, one hopes, not intentional.

Where in anyone's head is it right to starve a child to death because he kicked someone in the stomach and she miscarried triplets?! If you were that enraged, then taking the kid to another family member till you cooled off, and then going to counseling to find out what's wrong would make far more sense.

In this case it looks like the child might have had severe issues that needed help. From the outcome, it might have been hereditary.