A 33-year-old Georgia father will spend the rest of his life in prison after starving his 4-year-old daughter to death nearly two years ago, when her body was found almost completely devoid of food and water.
Fulton County Superior Judge Belinda Edwards sentenced Rodney McWeay to life in prison plus 155 years for the death of young Treasure McWeay. Last month, a Fulton County jury found McWeay guilty of all 14 charges related to his daughter’s death, including one count each of malice murder and felony murder.
Jurors also found him guilty on three counts of first-degree child cruelty, false imprisonment, kidnapping, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“This case is a heartbreaking reminder of what can happen when young children are isolated from safety and support. Treasure suffered from hunger, thirst, and neglect at the hands of her father, who used violence and control to prevent her and her brothers from receiving the assistance they required,” District Attorney Fani T. Willis said in a statement announcing the verdict.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, Treasure was so malnourished that she weighed only 24 pounds and had less than an ounce of water in her stomach when she died on December 11, 2023, at a children’s hospital in Atlanta. A healthy child her age should be about twice that weight.
Officers from the Atlanta Police Department responded to McWeay’s home in the 4000 block of Renfrew Court at 3:53 p.m. that day after receiving a call about an unresponsive 4-year-old who had been transported to Hughes Spalding Children’s Hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. McWeay was not present when authorities arrived, but his two sons had been hospitalized for severe malnutrition and other ailments.
Authorities said the physical evidence showed that McWeay consistently abused and neglected Treasure and her two brothers inside his home — which prosecutors at trial reportedly referred to as a “house of horrors” — between May 2021 and December 2023.
Following a complaint to social services about the “unsatisfactory conditions” of Rodney McWeay’s home, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services took custody of the children in late June 2023. However, within a week, police said McWeay went to Maryland, where the children’s mother, Passion Mitchell, lived.
He then “stole her car and left it parked at a train station as he brought the kids back to Georgia,” according to a probable cause affidavit.
According to the Georgia Gazette, McWeay exercised dictatorial control over his children, locking all three of them in a single room and allowing them to leave only with his express permission.
When police executed a search warrant on McWeay’s home, there was no food or children’s clothing inside. They did, however, say that he had several operational surveillance cameras inside and outside the house, some of which were pointed directly at the children’s beds.
“He controlled everything, so no one got in—not even law enforcement,” Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Marshal Hodge told jurors during her opening statement, according to Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA. “Until Treasure died.”
McWeay was arrested about two weeks after his daughter died, when officers watching his house noticed him leaving through the front door and detained him.
At trial, his defense attorney reportedly claimed that while the father made “some wrong decisions,” he never intended to harm his children and adored them all.
