Babysitter, 1 other face charges after 3-year-old boy shot and killed, police say
ATLANTA (ANF/Gray News) – Police in Atlanta say two people, including a 71-year-old babysitter, are facing charges after a 3-year-old boy was shot and killed on Easter while his parents were at work.
Atlanta Police homicide investigators obtained arrest warrants for 71-year-old Barbara Edwards and 35-year-old Jermaine Hardeman. Both are facing multiple charges after 3-year-old Armani Lyons died last Sunday from a gunshot wound.
Assistant Police Chief Carvan Tyrus said at a news conference last Monday that Armani was left with a babysitter in their 70s while his parents were at work.
“Somehow that 3-year-old ends up with a gunshot wound to the head,” Tyrus said.
Dinisha Lyons, Armani’s mother, said she dropped her son off at a longtime babysitter’s apartment before she headed to work at the airport last Saturday night. Just hours later, she got a phone call from police to go to Grady Memorial Hospital, where her son was rushed after the incident. He died at the hospital.
“I’m not gonna see him again. No more laughing. No more playing. No more nothing,“ Lyons said. “He was a baby who didn’t even get to see life for real.”
Lyons says Armani was a joyful child who loved monster trucks and Spider-Man. She wants justice for his death.
“Why you do it? What did he, a 3-year-old, do to you to make you shoot him?” she said.
Both Edwards and Hardeman are facing charges of felony murder, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and cruelty to children in the second degree.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help Armani’s family with funeral costs.
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