Sherry Magby faces six child-cruelty charges as investigators await medical findings in Douglasville.
DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. — A 1-year-old child has died after police in suburban Atlanta said six children were left alone for about 12 hours inside a foul-smelling home with little food, leading to criminal charges against Sherry Magby, a 37-year-old woman now being held in the Douglas County Jail.
The case matters now because the child’s death has turned what began as a neglect investigation into a broader criminal inquiry with the possibility of more serious charges. Douglasville police have said the investigation remains open, the Georgia Department of Human Services has confirmed the child’s death, and the most important medical question in the case, the cause and manner of death, has not been released. Until those findings are public, the case sits in a tense middle stage: one child is dead, five others were found alive, and prosecutors are still deciding how far the criminal case will go.
Police were called March 28 to a home in the 6000 block of James D. Simpson Avenue on a report of a child in cardiac arrest. Inside, officers said, they found six children ranging in age from 1 to 10. A 10-year-old had been left in charge of the younger children, ages 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8, according to warrant accounts reported by local news outlets. Investigators said the children had been alone for roughly half a day. Officers entering the house described a strong odor and rooms in disarray, details that quickly shifted the response from a medical emergency to a child-welfare and criminal investigation. An ambulance was seen leaving the home with a baby, neighbors later told local stations. Magby was arrested April 2. By April 9, the public case had widened when state officials confirmed that the 1-year-old had died, even as police still had not publicly said what caused the death or exactly when the child’s condition became irreversible.
Arrest warrant details reported by several outlets say the children were left without enough food or safe living conditions. The most disturbing account came from the oldest child, who told investigators there was not enough food in the home and that the 1-year-old had been eating ants and cockroaches. That statement became one of the central facts cited in coverage of the case, but it did not answer the biggest medical question. Police have not said whether hunger, illness, neglect, another injury or some combination of factors caused the death. State officials have released little beyond confirming that the child died. In a statement carried by local outlets, a Georgia Department of Human Services spokesperson said the agency was devastated by the loss and would continue cooperating with law enforcement. Public reporting has also been uneven on Magby’s relationship to all six children. Local television reports identified her as the children’s mother, while one warrant-based follow-up said the public record reviewed there did not spell out her relationship to each child. That unresolved detail has added confusion to an already grim case.
The allegations landed hard in a part of Douglasville where neighbors said they had seen the children outside before but did not understand the depth of the trouble inside the house. The home sits near a church and a community outreach center, a fact that became part of the public reaction as residents tried to make sense of what happened. Ken Howell, who works with a nearby outreach program, told WSB-TV, “All they had to do was come down here. We could have helped them get food.” Other neighbors told local reporters they had seen the children outside late at night without an adult, and one said she and her husband had talked in the past about whether they should request a welfare check. Those accounts do not establish what happened inside the home on March 28, but they do show how the case is being understood in the neighborhood: not as a single shocking moment, but as a possible crisis that may have unfolded in plain sight. For residents, the case has become a story of missed warning signs, small fragments of memory and the sudden realization that a child had died just steps from places where help might have been available.
The legal posture is unusually heavy for a case that is still missing its key medical findings. Magby has been charged with six counts of second-degree cruelty to children, one count for each child identified in the warrant summaries. Under Georgia law, second-degree cruelty to children involves causing cruel or excessive physical or mental pain through criminal negligence, and a conviction can bring one to 10 years in prison. The case also reopened scrutiny of an earlier prosecution against Magby. FOX 5 reported that she had already been out on bond in a 2023 case in which she was accused of stabbing her teenage son in the back with a pocketknife and facing charges that included aggravated assault and child-cruelty counts. That earlier case remains unresolved, and local reporting said trial was scheduled for May. On April 9, FOX 5 reported that a judge revoked her previous release and that Magby would remain jailed without bond. None of those earlier allegations prove the new case, but they do shape what happens next because prosecutors can argue that the current charges show a pattern of risk while the defense is likely to argue that the public still does not know what medically caused the 1-year-old’s death.
For now, the case remains defined as much by what is unknown as by what has been charged. Police have not announced a homicide count, a neglect-related death charge or any other upgraded accusation tied directly to the child’s death. Authorities also have not publicly explained where the surviving children were taken after officers arrived, whether any had visible injuries, or when the coroner expects to release findings. What the public does know is stark enough: a cardiac arrest call brought police to a Douglasville home, officers found six children inside, one of them later died, and the oldest child described hunger severe enough that a toddler was eating insects. Outside the house, neighbors remembered the ambulance and the silence after it left. Some said they were still struggling to talk about the allegations. The block itself has now become part of the story, with ordinary places, a sidewalk, nearby buildings, a short walk to community help, recast as the backdrop to a death investigation that continues to widen. Each new record release, whether from the coroner, police or prosecutors, is likely to answer one question while raising several more.
As of Monday, the public case file still pointed to six child-cruelty charges, an open death investigation and no released cause or manner of death for the 1-year-old. The next major milestone is expected to be medical findings from the coroner and any decision by prosecutors on whether the charges against Magby will be expanded.
Author note: Last updated April 13, 2026.