ATLANTA — New documents are prompting new questions about the death of a four-year-old girl in Atlanta's Baker Hills neighborhood.
An autopsy found Treasure McWeay was "extremely malnourished and dehydrated," weighing just 24 pounds at the time of her death. The criminal warrants obtained by 11Alive News said she was "extremely underweight" with a face appearing to be "sunken in around the eyes and cheekbones."
Fulton County Jail records show her father, Rodney McWeay, faces fourteen criminal charges, including murder and cruelty to children. Aside from expired milk and eggs, authorities said they found no food in the home and no clothes for any of the three children.
"When we do have a tragedy, how can we use that situation to improve the way we respond?" said Tom Rawlings, a child welfare consultant and attorney ."Here, for example, I think we will probably need to be looking into why we didn't make contact with this family."
The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services told 11Alive it had prior involvement with this family for allegations of abuse and neglect.
"We were unable to locate the family after the most recent reports," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We attempted to reach the family by phone multiple times, made unannounced visits to the family’s last known address, contacted law enforcement to request assistance with locating the family, etc."
The agency last made contact with the family on June 26, 2023.
"If you can't find the parent, if you can't find the child, that's sort of a red flag," Rawlings told 11Alive. "You've got to go and start looking for that family. You can talk to relatives. You can talk to neighbors."
Rawlings, the former director of Georgia DFCS, said as a government agency, officials can cross-reference background information shared with the government across the board, including for programs like like SNAP and CLEAR, a background check database service by Thomson Reuters, "but (the programs) give a lot of background information that (DFCS) has access to."
"The danger, of course, is that if you get a report that a child is being abused or neglected and you can't find that child, that may really be a situation that could be dangerous for the child and the family," he added. "I think we need to find a way to do more to make sure that we are looking for that family, finding that family, establishing contact and ensuring that we are assessing whether the child is truly in danger."
DFCS said its investigation is still in progress but that it's fully cooperating and partnering with law enforcement to ensure justice in this matter. It said its agency is required to make reasonable efforts to prevent the removal of a child from his or her home unless there is an immediate danger to the child’s health or safety.