DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A daycare owner charged with murder is now out on a $200,000 bond.
Amanda Hickey is accused in the death of a 4-month-old boy at the daycare she ran out of her home in Dunwoody.
According to the bond order, Hickey has been placed on house arrest, and has to wear a GPS monitor. She has also been ordered to have no contact with the families of the victims and minors under age of 10, except her own family. She also cannot work at or operate daycare in any manner.
According to police, last month, Hickey put the baby face down for a nap, and didn't check on him for hours. When she returned, she found him unresponsive.
Hickey is also facing child cruelty charges for allegedly causing harm to four other children in her care.
During a bond hearing back in February, prosecutors described the four additional counts of child cruelty Hickey is now charged with.
The counts are described in warrants obtained by 11Alive and are based on video recordings from within the daycare on the same day as the 4-month-old boy's death, according to an officer with the Dunwoody Police Department.
The warrants describe four separate incidents involving four other children.
In one warrant Hickey is accused of holding a 7-month-old with one hand by the child’s leg and letting go of him while he was upside down. “The infant then falls onto his face and head into the bottom of the pack and play,” the investigator wrote in the warrant.
In a second warrant, Hickey is accused of handling a 14-month-old with force on two occasions. First, the officer writes she grabbed the child by the shoulder and “forces the infant to lay down, by shoving her forward where the infant's face hits the mesh wall of the pack and play. This was done with such force the pack and play shifts.”
On the same date and involving the same child, the officer claims Hickey entered the room, grabbed a “fist full” of the 14-month-old’s hair, and forces the “infant to lay down by pulling the infant by the hair forward and downward. The infant strikes the bottom of the pack and play.” The defendant is also seen “carrying the infant by the neck and arm causing the infant’s face to turn red.”
In a third warrant, Hickey is described as feeding a 10-month-old, then picking him up by one arm and setting him on the floor in front of her “with force,” as the child lands on his side. Then the officer describes Hickey lifting the child off the floor again by one arm, swinging him forward and releasing him “causing the infant's head, neck and upper back to strike the hard surface. It's obvious the child is screaming at the time,” the warrant reads.
In the fourth warrant, an interaction between a 6-month old and Hickey is described, where she picked up the child with her hands under the infant’s armpits. As she raises the child up Hickey is accused of twice shaking the child in an “up and down motion.” She then according to an investigator drops the infant into a bouncer and drops a blanket on top of the bouncer and infant. The investigator wrote, “The infant is left there crying.”
Hickey's initial warrant for the murder charge that led to her arrest presents the evidence police claim details the death of the 4-month-old boy.
In the warrant for the murder charge, a Dunwoody Police investigator writes, Hickey "placed him in the pack and play at 1:05 but did not check on him until 3:45 when he was found unresponsive. She told the detective that she put him on his back in the pack and play. She stated he must have rolled over. She stated she was trained to put children face up. The video shows her putting him down face down. He does crawl a bit but stopped around 1:45."
In a police report, Hickey is quoted as describing how she recalled the incident playing out.
The incident report details Hickey telling officers she put a 4-month-old boy down for a nap inside a playpen with a thin mattress. In the incident report, Hickey claims she placed the boy down on his back. An officer wrote Hickey returned to the bedroom and found the boy laying "belly down in the bed." The officer states Hickey said she wasn't immediately alarmed because the boy's mother, according to Hickey, had mentioned: "he had rolled over for the first time" earlier the same week.
Hickey then noticed the boy wasn't responsive and, according to the report, called 911, started CPR, and yelled to her husband for help.
Currently, Hickey's Little Lovey Daycare is closed.
Following the child's death, the state ordered an emergency closure of the facility. Hickey had 48-hours to appeal the order, but according to a spokesman for DECAL Hickey didn't file an appeal.
Little Lovey Daycare will remains closed until a hearing is held before an administrative law judge.