Six children, all aged 10 or younger, were left completely unsupervised, turning fatal for one child

What Douglasville police say they found inside a home on James D. Simpson Avenue is the kind of story that is hard to read and even harder to process.

In FOX 5 Atlanta’s report, Kevyn Stewart described a case involving six children, all age 10 or younger, who investigators say were left alone for roughly 12 hours in a house with little or no food, foul conditions, and no adult supervision. According to Stewart’s reporting, the oldest child was just 10 years old and had been left in charge of the others, including a 2-year-old and a 1-year-old.

That alone is disturbing enough.

But what makes the case even more painful is that one of the children, a baby seen leaving the home in an ambulance, later died. Stewart said police were not publicly discussing the child’s condition at the time of the report, but the case had already become what his FOX 5 colleagues called an “absolute tragedy” involving children found in what were described as unspeakable conditions.

What Police Say Happened Inside The Home

Reporting from the scene, Kevyn Stewart said investigators were still piecing together details, but the arrest warrants and early police findings painted a grim picture.

According to Stewart, Douglasville police said six children between the ages of 1 and 10 had been left home alone for at least 12 hours. The children were allegedly under the supervision of the 10-year-old.

That is a staggering responsibility to place on any child, much less one still in elementary school.

Stewart reported that the 10-year-old told police the children had been eating roaches and ants while they were left alone. That detail is almost too awful to sit with for long, but it says everything about the condition those children were living in.

The home itself, according to the report Stewart cited, was found in disarray and had a foul odor when officers entered.

Those details matter, because they suggest this was not just a case of bad judgment for one afternoon. It sounds much deeper than that.

A Neighbor Says The Warning Signs Were Already There

One of the most striking parts of Stewart’s report came from a neighbor who said what happened was horrifying, but not entirely out of the blue.

The woman, who lives nearby, told FOX 5 she had seen the children outside alone late at night before. Stewart quoted her saying that at one point she told her husband they might need to call in a welfare check because he came home around midnight one night and the children were outside playing with no mother in sight.

That statement changes the story in an important way.

It suggests these children may have been living in instability long before this case turned into a criminal arrest and a fatal outcome. It also raises the painful question that comes up so often after cases like this: how many warning signs were visible before the situation reached this point?

The neighbor told Stewart she did not know Sherry Magby well, but she said it was not unusual to see the children without seeing their mother.

That does not make the outcome easier to understand.

If anything, it makes it feel even heavier.

The Mother Was Arrested, But Questions Still Hang Over The Case

Stewart reported that 37-year-old Sherry Magby was taken into custody and charged with six counts of child cruelty.

According to his report, police believe she was the sole caretaker, at least based on what investigators knew at that stage. The neighbor told FOX 5 she did not know much about the children’s father and said she had not seen a father figure around the house. She also speculated the children might now be with relatives or possibly in state custody, though Stewart made clear there had been no official confirmation about where the children were placed.

That uncertainty is understandable early in an investigation, but it leaves a lot unanswered.

Where was the mother during those 12 hours?

How long had the children been living like this?

And what exactly happened to the baby who was loaded into an ambulance without lights or sirens, as the neighbor described it?

Police, Stewart said, would not answer those questions at the time.

That is common in an active case, especially one involving children, but it leaves the public staring at the outline of something terrible without yet knowing the full shape of it.

The Baby In The Ambulance Became The Center Of The Tragedy

One image from Stewart’s report sticks more than any other.

A neighbor told him she saw a baby being taken out of the home in an ambulance the night this happened. She believed it was the 1-year-old child. She noticed the ambulance left without lights or sirens, and she was still wondering what had happened.

That detail felt ominous even before the worst became clear.

There are moments in local news reports where a small observation says more than any official statement. This was one of them. It was quiet, uncertain, and deeply unsettling.

At the time of Stewart’s report, Douglasville police were not giving details about the child’s condition. But now that one child has died, that earlier silence looks even more heartbreaking in hindsight.

A child that young depends on adults for absolutely everything. Food, safety, comfort, attention, even the basic chance to survive the day. When those things are missing, the result can turn fatal far faster than people want to imagine.

That is the hardest part of this story.

The victims here were not teenagers left alone for a few hours. These were babies and little children.

The Allegations Are Even More Disturbing Because Of The Prior History

Stewart’s report also noted that this was not Magby’s first legal trouble involving children.

According to the background included in the report, she is already scheduled to go to trial in May on separate aggravated assault and child cruelty charges connected to an incident in 2023.

That prior case adds another layer to the story, and not a small one.

When someone already facing child-related criminal charges ends up arrested again in a case this serious, people are naturally going to ask whether more could have been done sooner. That does not mean every earlier allegation automatically predicts the next one, but it does mean the system had already encountered this family before.

And that is what makes stories like this feel so frustrating in addition to tragic.

It is one thing when something awful comes with no visible warning at all. It is another when the warning signs may have been there, neighbors noticed something was wrong, and the legal system already had prior contact.

What Happens Next

Kevyn Stewart said the Douglasville Police Department considers the investigation ongoing.

That means more facts are likely still coming, including what led officers to the home, what they found beyond the initial descriptions, and what role, if any, any other adult may have played in the lives of these children.

For now, Magby remains in jail facing six child-cruelty charges.

The surviving children, Stewart said, are no longer in that house, and that at least is one small mercy in a story with very little comfort in it.

Still, mercy feels like too soft a word here.

What happened inside that home sounds like prolonged neglect at a level no child should ever endure. A 10-year-old should not be acting as a parent to five younger children. A 1-year-old and a 2-year-old should never be left alone for half a day. And no child should ever have to tell police they ate insects because there was nothing else.

Those are not just failures of parenting. They are conditions of abandonment.

And when one child dies, the whole story changes. It stops being only a child-cruelty case and becomes something much darker, something that leaves a permanent mark on everyone connected to it.

Stewart’s reporting made clear that this is still a developing story. But even with unanswered questions, one thing is already certain: six very young children were living in a situation that should have set off every alarm possible, and one of them did not make it out alive.