A mother with undiagnosed mental health issues is accused of killing her one-year-old and two-year-old sons "by placing them in an oven and turning it on," an arrest warrant states.
Last weekend, police in Atlanta stated that both toddlers had "received burn marks on their bodies at some point, possibly from the stove," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The warrant on Monday alleges that their mother, 24-year-old Lamora Williams, placed them inside the oven between midnight Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday.
Atlanta police have taken the stove as part of their investigation. Autopsy results for Ja'Karter Williams and his older brother, Ke'Younte Penn, are pending.
Family members tried to visit Williams at her southwest Atlanta apartment on Sunday but apparently did not succeed in seeing her.
"She's the only one who really knows what happened," Williams' sister Tabitha Hollingsworth told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Williams, who is being held without bond at the Fulton County jail, should be put on suicide watch there, Hollingsworth added. The mother —who has two other children, a three-year-old son, and a six-year-old daughter— on Monday waived her appearance in court on felony murder, according to jail officials.
On Friday night, Williams reportedly video chatted her sons' father, Jameel Penn, letting him know something was wrong at home. Penn alerted police after seeing his sons lying on the floor.
"After I seen what I seen, you know I called the police," Penn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Williams' two older children were unharmed.
According to family and friends, Williams' mental illness grew worse when she was 19 years old and her father died. She apparently grew more distressed by being the single mother of four young children with little caretaker help from Penn.
Williams' friend, Neesa Smith, said Williams called her on Friday night saying she "couldn't do it anymore."
When Williams admitted the boys were dead, Smith apparently told her to call the police, but the mother instead called Penn.
Police said Williams claimed she her children with a caregiver on Friday at noon and found them alone and dead late that evening. Police told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution they did not take Williams for her word.
Williams' mother, Brenda Williams, told CBS News that her daughter "wasn't right, she hasn't been right and what happened three months ago, that the kids' father left her, I told him something tragic is going to happen. She's going to do something to those kids, she's going to do something to herself."
Ja'Karter Williams and Ke'Younte Penn are not the only two children to die recently in an oven incident.
A 19-month-old girl died in Houston in November 2015 after a three-year-old sibling allegedly put her inside the oven in their home and her other three-year-old sibling apparently turned the kitchen appliance on until it was hot. Her five-year-old sibling was reportedly asleep at the time of the incident, and their mother, who left them home alone, returned to find one of her children dead.
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A Los Angeles native, Jessica Kwong grew up speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English, in that order. Her journalism career started ... Read more
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