An Atlanta man is facing a murder charge and a woman is facing multiple child cruelty counts after officers arrested them Thursday, three months after an infant girl was found unresponsive inside a Northwest Atlanta home. James Hayes, 32, and Kennedi Ponder, 31, were taken into custody without incident when Atlanta Police Department Homicide Detectives and the Fugitive Unit served an arrest warrant at a home on Mary George Avenue NW.
The arrests cap a monthslong investigation that began after officers were called to the home for a report of a person down. According to FOX 5 Atlanta, the infant was found unresponsive and later died at a hospital. An 11Alive report citing an Atlanta Police Department incident update pins the initial call at 7:49 a.m. on Saturday, May 2, when police officers and emergency medical personnel responded to the address following a person-down call involving the unresponsive infant girl.
Grady EMS transported the infant to Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital, where medical staff pronounced her dead despite lifesaving efforts. The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office has since taken custody of the infant's body, though the exact cause and manner of death have not been made public.
Charges Split Between Murder and Cruelty Counts
Hayes now faces second-degree murder, first-degree child cruelty, second-degree child cruelty, and a separate first-degree child cruelty count tied to deprivation of necessary sustenance. Ponder faces first-degree child cruelty, second-degree child cruelty, and the same first-degree child cruelty charge involving deprivation of necessary sustenance, but was not charged with murder.
Georgia's second-degree murder statute, O.C.G.A. § 16-5-1(d), applies specifically when a child's death results from second-degree child cruelty rather than direct malice, and carries a mandatory sentence of 10 to 30 years, according to a summary published on Wikipedia. First-degree cruelty to children under Georgia Code § 16-5-70(a)-(b) is a felony carrying 5 to 20 years when a caregiver willfully deprives a child of necessary sustenance or maliciously causes cruel or excessive pain, per Justia Law. Second-degree cruelty to children, by contrast, applies when the pain results from criminal negligence rather than malice and is punishable by 1 to 10 years.
Details of the underlying circumstances that led to the sustenance-deprivation charges have not been released. Hayes and Ponder were transported to Atlanta Public Safety Headquarters for interviews with homicide detectives following their arrest, according to the same police account relayed by FOX 5 Atlanta.
A Bungalow in a Historic Northwest Atlanta Neighborhood
The home at the center of the case sits on Mary George Avenue NW, inside Carver Hills, a historically Black residential neighborhood in Northwest Atlanta established in the late 1940s and 1950s within Neighborhood Planning Unit G, according to community master planning documents from the Georgia Conservancy. Real estate records from Redfin describe the property as a 792-square-foot single-family bungalow built in 1961, with three bedrooms and one bathroom.
Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital, where the infant was taken, has been managed by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta since 2006 and serves as the medical home for children in state DFCS custody, with 90% of its patient population relying on Medicaid or being uninsured, according to institutional profile data from Pediatric Research in Atlanta.
Infant Deaths Remain a Persistent Statewide Concern
Georgia's infant mortality rate stood at 7.1 per 1,000 live births from 2019 to 2023, remaining persistently above the national average, according to a statewide report from the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Georgia. Under Georgia's Child Fatality Review statute, local county review committees are legally mandated to review all unexpected, unexplained, or suspicious deaths of children under 18, including cases involving alleged abuse or neglect, per policy guidelines from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The exact cause and manner of the infant's death, along with the specific circumstances behind the sustenance-deprivation allegations, remain unresolved pending further findings from the medical examiner. Hayes and Ponder's arrests follow other recent Georgia cases involving fatal child abuse allegations, including a Canton murder charge after a toddler's death earlier this month. Both Hayes and Ponder face pending charges that remain unproven allegations in court.
