The Daycare Owner Was EVIL- The Story of Charlie Cronmiller

The Daycare Owner Was EVIL- The Story of Charlie Cronmiller

Said that was the mattress pad, but it looks like there’s no pad in there. I know that’s what I said, but she said that’s what he was sleeping on. They’re all like that though. I didn’t want to manipulate it, so I haven’t touched it yet, but he was found face down in that corner.

The story I have for you today is about a baby who was supposed to be well taken care of in a highly rated and long-running daycare, but instead, he would end up dead. This is the story of Charlie Cronmiller.

Charlie Cronmiller was born on September 26, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the firstborn son to Stephanie and Eric Cronmiller. He had big, adorable cheeks and beautiful blue eyes. At four months old, Charlie was on the verge of graduating from a coo-like giggle to a full-blown belly laugh. He was always full of smiles and snuggles.

Knowing that she would have to go back to work when Charlie was only a few months old, she and her husband began researching, interviewing, and considering all their nearby options for daycares. They would end up settling on an in-home daycare called Little Lovey, and it was located just down the street from where they lived.

Little Lovey Daycare was run in the basement of a home on Leisure Lane in Dunwoody, Georgia, and it was run by a woman named Amanda Hickey. Now, Amanda had been running this daycare out of her home for 10 years, and she was a well-respected member of the community, which was part of the reason why Stephanie and her husband had chosen that daycare for Charlie.

Charlie had been going to Little Lovey’s for about a month come February 2021. On the morning of February 3rd, Stephanie would kiss Charlie’s chubby little cheek goodbye, and her husband Eric would bring him to daycare. But later that day, Amanda Hickey, the daycare owner, would be calling 911 to say that a child in her care was unresponsive. That child was Charlie. He had been found face down, covered in his own vomit, not breathing.

When First Responders arrived on the scene, CPR was performed to try to save Charlie’s life. Upon getting the news that her son was not breathing, Stephanie rushed over to Amanda’s house and would get in the back of the ambulance to go to the hospital with Charlie.

“Have her go in the ambulance with them.”

“Seat is right, ma’am. Get go in the ambulance right there. They’re getting ready to go. This is Mom.”

And unfortunately, regardless of the paramedics’ life-saving attempts, Charlie would be pronounced dead after he was brought to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Two days later, on February 5th, Amanda Hickey was placed under arrest and charged with first-degree felony murder and two counts of second-degree cruelty to children.

“Don’t you turn around. Face me. It’s chained on your back, okay? You’re being placed under arrest. Okay. Okay, do you want to talk to me? If so, we can go back to the police department. We can talk. If not, you’re going to go straight to the county jail. Yes, you do want to talk to me? Yes. Okay, so then we’ll go back and we’ll discuss it at the interview room, and then from there, you’ll be released to the jail.”

“Okay, can I tell anyone inside that that’s where I’m going?”

“Who’s in there?”

“My daughter.”

“Yeah, go ahead. Call her down to the door, sure. Her name?”

“Natalie.”

“Miss Natalie, can you come here for a moment, please? Mom’s going to go with us, okay, to the headquarters for right now. She wants to talk to me, and then from there, she’ll be turned over to the DeKalb County jail. Once she gets to the jail, she’ll be able to make phone calls and call and let you know about bonding and things like that, but it’s going to be a couple of days before she gets a bond, okay?”

“Okay.”

“So she wanted to let you know.”

“Okay. Okay, what just—I can tell our attorney, what is she being arrested for?”

“Murder and cruelty to children in the second degree.”

Amanda told police that she had put Charlie in the pack-and-play on his back, as mandated by state law. She said that he must have rolled over onto his stomach on his own from there. However, the video footage that police obtained from Amanda’s home security system showed a much different story. At 1:05 p.m., she had brought Charlie over to the pack-and-play and laid him down on his stomach—and this is, of course, against recommended medical guidelines for safe infant sleeping positions, and she knew that, having been trained on that.

On the security footage, Charlie had done a bit of a crawl until around 1:45 p.m., when he finally stopped, and Amanda would not check on little Charlie for around two and a half hours. It wasn’t until 3:45 p.m. that she went back in there, and it was at that time that he was found unresponsive. I don’t know why she would have put him on his stomach and not his back; it’s not like it takes any extra effort to just put a baby on its back instead.

So, Amanda had been charged with felony murder based on the fact that she had placed Charlie face down, causing his death, and she had been charged with second-degree child cruelty because of the cruel or excessive physical or mental anguish that she had put Charlie through by laying him on his stomach.

Amanda was then booked into the DeKalb County jail, and when she made her first court appearance the day after her arrest, the judge would send her case to Superior Court. And since Amanda Hickey and her daycare, Little Lovey’s, were so well known and respected within the community, somebody actually opened up a GoFundMe for Amanda’s family and legal expenses. However, this would be shut down shortly after gaining around $15,000 when new allegations against Amanda began to emerge.

So, during her bond hearing on February 18th, prosecutors said they had filed four more counts of child cruelty against Amanda. This was based on video surveillance footage that had been uncovered the day that Charlie had died. While reviewing the video footage, police had uncovered abuse involving six other children at the daycare center, all infants and toddlers under the age of two.

Amanda was accused of pushing and grabbing one little girl with a fistful of hair and yanking her back down into the playpen, before then picking her up by the arm and neck, causing the infant’s face to go red. Amanda was also seen on camera picking up a six-month-old baby and shaking it twice before dropping the infant into a bouncer and covering its head with a blanket. Amanda then left the room.

Amanda was also seen holding a child upside down by his leg and then dropping him on his face. Video showed Amanda swinging other babies by the feet, slamming them into the ground, pulling them by the hair, pushing and tripping toddlers, and placing other babies as well in unsafe sleep positions. And usually, after Amanda would attack these helpless babies, she would just walk out of the room and leave them crying—so, the exact opposite of what a daycare provider is supposed to do.

At the time of Charlie’s death, Amanda had also had 10 children in her care, infants and toddlers. She was only licensed to have six at a time in her care. Ten! There’s no way she could possibly give 10 infants and toddlers good enough care, even if she wasn’t a cruel, sadistic bat—that’s just too many infants and toddlers.

At this hearing, Amanda’s attorney also asked that her bond be set to $200,000, and family and friends would also speak in support of Amanda. However, after a judge had seen video footage of Amanda with the children in her care, she denied her bond altogether.

Around this same time as her arrest, the state would also shut down Amanda’s daycare. The Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning would make a statement saying:

“Miss Hickey did not appeal our intended order of emergency closure within 48 hours. As a result, her family Child Care Learning Center located at 2369 Leisure Lane in Dunwoody will be closed for the next 21 days while we continue to investigate the child death that occurred there on February 3, 2021. If we determine revoking her license is necessary, the program will then remain closed until a hearing is held before an administrative law judge.”

And Amanda’s daycare had just been inspected days prior to Charlie’s death on January 28th. It was determined that Little Lovey Daycare had met the requirements in order to continue operating following a licensing study by the state. She was, however, cited for not completing the state-mandated yearly hours of training; she had only completed three out of the necessary 10 hours each year. And during that inspection in January—which was conducted virtually due to the pandemic—Amanda had been in compliance with only having six children in her care at the time (I’m pretty sure she probably had some hidden in the closet though, because it was only a virtual). The daycare had also been recently inspected and had good ratings on Quality.org.

On March 12, 2021, Amanda Hickey would be granted her bond of $200,000, and that night she was bonded out of jail. She did, however, have several conditions that she needed to follow: she was fitted with a GPS-monitored ankle bracelet, she was placed on house arrest, she was also not to speak to any of her victims or the victim’s families, she was prohibited from having contact with any children under 10 except for her own, and she could not work at any daycare center.

Now, Amanda’s attorney would try to keep the video surveillance footage that was taken at the daycare out of the trial. Her attorney was arguing that after police had responded to Amanda’s home after the 911 call, she had never been made aware that she was the subject of a murder investigation, and she was never told she had the right to remain silent or the right to refuse to give the Dunwoody Police Department the video surveillance footage or her DVR. The filing that Amanda’s attorney had submitted additionally argued that their client had been intimidated into believing that she had to comply with everything the Dunwoody Police had asked of her, which then resulted in an intentional trampling of Miss Hickey’s Fourth Amendment right to be secure in her home from an unreasonable search and seizure (it’s not unreasonable though, because the child died in her house, so how would that be at all unreasonable?).

Prosecutors countered, however, that Amanda had no reasonable expectation of privacy given that the daycare business operated out of her own home and was subject to state regulations, which included the consent to inspections and entries by the Department of Early Care and Learning at the time. The filing added that the state child care services agencies that oversee daycare operations would have access to all records related to the care of the children, which included the video surveillance (yeah, you can’t just keep that from officials when you operate a daycare; doesn’t work that way).

On top of that, Amanda had given consent to police—which can be seen in body camera footage—to enter her home to look at surveillance camera footage and also to take the footage back to police headquarters to aid in the investigation.

“I put him to bed on his back, but his parents say that he could roll over, but I had never seen it.”

“What time did you call 911?”

“I can show you. I was quite flipped out, so I dialed it, and then I think I just kept hitting it, and then I think this was them calling me back. I laid Charlie on his back, and I found in the corner—this corner roll here—into this position here.”

“Was there a mat, or is it the mat?”

“That’s the mat that he was laying on.”

“So you said you put him down at what time?”

“Um, a little bit after 2:00, I believe. That would be his normal schedule, like 2:00 or 2:30, and then he would typically, um, he would have slept and then had a bottle at 3:00.”

“Okay, so you came down at 2:45? 3:45?”

“3:45. I mean, obviously, if I would have known we were having an emergency, I wouldn’t have let him sleep, but I thought he was just tired or still sleeping. His bottle was scheduled for 3:00, so I have his bottle on the counter ready to go waiting for him to wake up. So this is just a—and off, you just show me again, like that’s for the front, this is the back—if you just show me how you laid him and then how you found him. Let me take a picture.”

“Did you see that?”

“Yeah, I left it open because it needs to be drained; it hasn’t—it’s not draining through the hose, and the bucket’s full. I was going to let you know.”

“A picture, what?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Just so no one thinks that was open, right?”

“No, you’re fine, you don’t have to move, that’s fine. Right here is good, the light a-okay. Show me how you placed them.”

“Sure, let me do a picture and then show me how you…”

“And there was another child in there, so you put him down and picked one up, right?”

“Did so he was in there by himself?”

“He was, yes, yes, yes. There was a switch.”

“So I noticed you have cameras. They record 24/7?”

“Um, I believe so, yeah.”

“Or is it just motion?”

“That’s a great question. I’m not positive.”

“Okay, that’s okay. Would we be able to access those?”

“I think so. The footage, like the—like the families don’t, it’s not like something that I share with the families, it’s a—no, yeah, I understand.”

“Mattress pad? She said that was the mattress pad, but it looks like there’s no pad in there.”

“I know, that’s what I said, but she said that’s what he was sleeping on. They’re all like that, though. I didn’t want to manipulate it, so I haven’t touched it yet, but he was found face down in that corner, top left corner. She put him back and she said he must roll over, but they do have a camera in here right there, like it’s not—is it going to capture that?”

“I don’t know.”

“See that discoloration on the pad?”

“Yeah, I see it, man. And then the discoloration on the actual, uh, the brown, yeah.”

Even though her attorney was trying to get the video surveillance kept out of the trial as evidence, it wouldn’t end up mattering because on September 22, 2023, Amanda would plead guilty to seven counts of first-degree child cruelty, seven counts of reckless conduct, one count of second-degree child cruelty, and three counts of battery. Amanda had entered into an Alford plea, which allowed her to maintain her innocence while also accepting that it was best for her to plead guilty.

Amanda Hickey was sentenced to 35 years, 30 of those in confinement and the remaining 5 years on probation. Once she’s released, the conditions of her probation will include that she has no contact with her victims or the victim’s families, she may not have contact or work with any children under the age of 13, and she may not financially benefit from this case.

During her sentencing hearing, Amanda apologized to the families of the victim, saying:

“I know there is nothing in words I can say to take away their pain, except take responsibility and express extreme sorrow for what I have done. This is my legacy now. There are no excuses. I failed everyone. I failed myself, I failed my family, parents, clients, previous clients. I broke everyone’s hearts with my conduct that day, and I am absolutely responsible for everything.”

During this virtual hearing, Stephanie Cronmiller, Charlie’s mother, would also speak, and she would say that she wished she could erase that day and hold Charlie once again in her arms. She said she’s now living in a nightmare because she had trusted someone who lied and lied and still thinks she’s innocent—she’s only sorry that she got caught. Stephanie says she saw no remorse from Amanda.

Amanda was taken into custody immediately following her hearing. A GoFundMe was created to establish a charity in Charlie’s name and help to cover any of the family’s needs that may have arisen from Charlie’s death. Charlie Cronmiller’s funeral was held on February 10, 2021, at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church; he was then cremated.

Charlie’s Army is a foundation in Charlie’s memory that was set up by his parents. The foundation fights to protect infants and young children who do not yet have voices of their own. Charlie’s parents would also welcome a new baby named Liam—short for William—into the world on September 21, 2022, just a few days prior to what would have been Charlie’s second birthday.

Well, thank you for listening to all of Charlie’s story today. What happened to Charlie and his family is terrifying; you just don’t know who you can and can’t trust. The daycare had great reviews, was open for years, and the owner was loved by the community. And yet, not only did a baby die there, but other infants and toddlers were being abused. And unfortunately, it took poor baby Charlie dying for these atrocities to come forward—the ones that were committed by a woman whose job it was to care for these children because their parents trusted her.