A girl has been charged with homicide in the death of her 6-year-old son outdoors Atlanta greater than 23 years in the past, her arrest caused by a forensic artist’s rendering of the kid that led to a tip, authorities stated Wednesday.
A DeKalb County grand jury returned an indictment on June 28 towards Teresa Ann Bailey Black, District Attorney Sherry Boston said in a news launch.
Black, 45, is charged with felony homicide, cruelty to youngsters, aggravated assault and concealing the death of one other in the death of William DaShawn Hamilton. She was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, on June 29 and is awaiting extradition to Georgia.
No lawyer was listed for Black in on-line courtroom information.
When the boy’s physique was discovered in a wooded space on Feb. 26, 1999, authorities estimated he had been lifeless for 3 to 6 months. His id was unknown and the way and trigger of his death was undetermined.
He remained unidentified for many years, regardless of the efforts of DeKalb County police and the county health worker’s workplace, in addition to news protection of the case. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) received concerned in 2000, offering renderings of the boy and that includes the story. A forensic artist with the middle produced a brand new rendering in 2019 that was featured by news retailers.
An individual who knew Black and her son in 1998 noticed a rendering in May 2020 and contacted the middle, in accordance with the news launch. That particular person, named Ava, instructed the NCMEC that when she noticed the picture, she screamed and began to cry.
“I knew that was him,” she told the center. “It was no doubt. That was him.”
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
DeKalb County police and prosecutors then adopted that lead.
DNA collected from Black earlier this 12 months linked her to the stays, authorities stated.
“For far too long, this precious little boy had no name and no story,” Boston stated in the news launch. “Through the tireless efforts of several individuals and organizations who were determined not to let this boy be forgotten, William has been identified, and justice will be served in his memory.”
Black and her son had been residing in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a member of the family when she withdrew William from faculty in December 1998 and moved with him to Atlanta, the discharge says. She returned to Charlotte in late 1999 with out the boy and instructed completely different tales about the place he was.
Angeline Hartmann, spokesperson for the NCMEC, stated the case demonstrates “why we never give up hope.”
“For more than two decades, a woman in Charlotte who knew William and his mother followed her gut feeling that something wasn’t right and kept looking for him,” Hartmann stated in the discharge. “We’re grateful she never stopped until she found a rendering of William online and gave investigators the missing piece to help solve this 23-year-old mystery.”
Boston is asking anybody who might have identified Black or William on the time of the boy’s death to name her workplace.
For Ava, the lady who noticed the artist’s rendering and known as in the essential tip, her lengthy seek for William is over.
“Maybe that was my purpose of coming into his life — to make sure that once his life was taken, that I would get him justice,” Ava told the NCMEC. “And I have.”
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