The owner of the shuttered Little Lovey Home Daycare in Dunwoody is headed to prison after an infant died in her care. Amanda Hickey, 45, pleaded guilty to nearly 20 counts of child cruelty and reckless conduct. Hickey entered an Alford plea to second-degree murder and other charges connected to the February 2021 death of four-month-old Charlie Cronmiller.

Video shows Hickey put the baby in a crib for a nap on his stomach, and failed to check on him for two hours and 40 minutes.

An Alford plea effectively allows a defendant to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence.

DeKalb County Assistant District Attorney Eddie Chase told Judge LaTisha Dear Jackson that Hickey took advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to nearly double the number of children under her care. She was licensed to care for six, but the day before Charlie’s death, she had 11, and there were 10 there on February 3. Investigators found evidence of Hickey abusing six other children, all under two years old.

Tears and sniffles were heard throughout the courtroom during emotional testimony by the victims’ families. A half-dozen couples took the witness stand to express their horror and the betrayal they felt once they saw video of how Hickey treated their children. Her system recorded her snatching kids by their arms or legs, swinging them, and dropping them. Parents said her expression when dangling a child and dropping him on his head in crib was “cold and emotionless.” One said the practiced way Hickey manhandled their children was not a one-time thing; it was an “escalated behavior.”

In each case, the mothers read their impact statements on the stand while the fathers sat next to them in support. Many said they are riddled with guilt for selecting Hickey as their child care provider. Several had such a good relationship with her that they considered her as close as family; they socialized, and some even attended Hickey’s wedding. Now, they say, it is hard for them to trust anyone ever again.

One couple shared that their daughter is so traumatized from her abusive time at Little Lovey years ago that she cries when she asks if the next day is a school day and the answer is “yes.” The pain is fresh and vivid even three years later. The little girl is afraid to try new things, her mother said, and in the days when she wore a diaper, the girl “would be soaking wet head to toe and not make a sound. She was scared the person who’d come to get her would be a monster,” the mom testified. “The ease of you yanking my daughter by the hair and slamming her…is not a one-time thing. It’s escalated behavior.”

Another mother shared that she and her husband “ache with regret” for having not one, but both their children in Hickey’s daycare, noting that the woman could look them smilingly in the eye while behind closed doors she had brutally shaken their daughter and dropped her.

“We will forever honor Charlie, for he is the one who showed us who Amanda really is,” said that mother on the stand. She calls Hickey “evil.”

Stephanie and Eric Cronmiller were the final couple to take the stand. Charlie’s mother recalled “the jarring image” of holding their son’s lifeless hand as he lay on a hospital gurney, and says she wishes she could erase that memory from her mind. Of Hickey, Cronmiller said, “There’s no remorse. The only thing she’s sorry about is that she got caught.

“I’ve decided it’s not my job to forgive her,” she continued. “I’ve handed that over to God to handle. I’ve focused on forgiving myself because I chose her.”

Before her sentencing, Hickey took the stand.

“I take absolute and complete responsibility for that day,” testified. “I broke everyone’s heart with my conduct that day and I take absolute responsibility for everything.” She said the person in the video is her, but that’s not who she really is.

Hickey, asked why she did what she did, said only that she was “broken” at that time. She testified that the person on that video was “presenting well,” but was broken inside, and stretched thin.

Judge Dear Jackson called it “traumatizing” watching the video evidence in a previous hearing, noting how an innocent child sitting near a window and watching Hickey blowing leaves outside was then slammed into a bookcase by Hickey when she returned. The judge said she purposely decided not to show the video at sentencing because it would serve no other purpose than to further hurt everyone involved. She called Hickey’s actions “disturbing,” running down a list of the abuse the woman doled out to children, picking them up and flinging them around, the judge said, “like a rag doll.”

Hickey insisted on the stand that she believed she had put Cronmiller down for his nap on his back, not his stomach: “I thought I did. I didn’t,” she testified.

She also whispered, “Yes,” when Chase asked whether that day was the only time she had ever abused children in her care.

Prosecutor Eddie Chase told the Court that Hickey had left Charlie, who did not yet have the upper body strength to turn himself over, in a prone position and had failed to check on him for fully two hours and 40 minutes. He noted that if Hickey had not been neglecting her duties, she could’ve turned him over and the boy would be alive today.

“It would’ve taken one second of her life, and Charlie would still have his,” said Chase.

The judge sentenced Hickey to 35 years with 30 years to serve, and five years on probation, with credit for time served. As deputies handcuffed her, a relative’s sobs grew louder, and she jumped up and dashed out of the courtroom before Hickey was escorted out to begin a long sentence behind bars.

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