Colby Walker was 4 years old. He was born in August 2022. On Monday evening, firefighters had to force their way into a home in southwest Atlanta, and inside, they found his body.
It started around 7:20 p.m., when Atlanta police showed up for a welfare check at a home on Cardinal Drive SW. Officers tried to reach someone inside. Nobody answered.
So they called Atlanta Fire Rescue. Crews forced their way in and searched the house. That’s when first responders found Colby.
Atlanta Police Homicide detectives took over from there. They got a search warrant and collected evidence from inside the home. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office also came out to the house while the investigation was underway.
Here’s what police haven’t said yet: how Colby died, or how long he had been dead. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office is handling the death investigation.
Investigators did confirm that other children were accounted for and that family members had been contacted. The Wilkes County Sheriff’s Office also notified the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services.
While detectives worked to figure out what happened to Colby, they identified a person of interest and started tracking that person to Wilkes County. Wilkes County deputies found the vehicle in the Washington area, about 100 miles east of Atlanta, and took 32-year-old Jasmaine Smoak into custody. She faces warrants for second-degree cruelty to children and concealing the death of another person, and she is in the Wilkes County Jail.
Police have not said what relationship Smoak had to Colby, and the investigation is still open. Our hearts go out to Colby’s family.
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