Infant dies after day care owner puts him ‘belly down’ for nap, Georgia police say

Tanasia Kenney

A Georgia day care owner remains in jail after her arrest in connection with the death of an infant last week.

Amanda Harris Hickey, 45, ran the Little Lovey Daycare out of her Atlanta area home for more than a decade. On Monday, the state Department of Early Care and Learning ordered an emergency closure of the facility days after a 4-month-old boy died in her care, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Hickey faces felony murder and child cruelty charges in the Feb. 3 incident, Dunwoody police said in a news release.

In warrants obtained by McClatchy News, authorities describe how the day care owner laid the baby “belly down” for a nap and did not check on him for over two hours.

Hickey initially told officers she placed the boy face up on a thin mattress inside a “Pack N Play-style play pen” around 2 p.m., a police incident report states. However, authorities say surveillance video shows she laid the child down nearly an hour earlier, at 1:06 p.m.

Later, “Hickey returned to the bedroom and found [the baby] laying belly down in the bed,” but told police “she wasn’t immediately alarmed because [the baby’s] mother mentioned “he had rolled over for the first time’ earlier that same week,” according to the report.

“She stated he must have rolled over,” a responding officer wrote in a warrant obtained by WXIA. “She stated she was trained to put children face up, [but] video shows her putting him down face down. He does crawl a bit but stopped around 1:45.”

Hickey called for police just before 3:45 p.m. after she realized the baby wasn’t responsive and had “vomit coming from his mouth,” authorities said. Dunwoody police arrived at the home and started resuscitation efforts on the infant while they waited for paramedics to arrive.

The child was rushed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Scottish-Rite hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Warrants show Hickey was watching seven other children at the time of the incident, but none needed medical attention and were picked up by their parents as the police investigation unfolded.

Under state guidance, however, Hickey was only licensed to care for six kids at a time, with the exception of two additional children “on a part-time capacity,” The Associated Press reported.

Hickey remained in the Dekalb County Jail without bond as of Tuesday afternoon, online records show.

Police said the incident remains under investigation.

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