Main: Rodney McWeay during his June 17, 2025, sentencing hearing in Atlanta (WXIA). Inset: Treasure McWeay (Family handout).
A 33-year-old Georgia man will spend the rest of his life in prison for the starvation death of his 4-year-old daughter nearly two years ago. At the time of her death, her body was found almost entirely lacking in food and water.
Fulton County Superior Judge Belinda Edwards sentenced Rodney McWeay to life imprisonment plus an additional 155 years in a state correctional facility for the murder of young Treasure McWeay. Last month, a Fulton County jury found McWeay guilty of all 14 charges he faced related to his daughter’s death, which included charges of malice murder and felony murder.
The jury also convicted him on three counts each 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 cut off from safety and support. Treasure suffered from hunger, thirst, and neglect at the hands of her father, who used violence and control to keep her and her brothers from the help they needed,” District Attorney Fani T. Willis said in a statement announcing the verdict.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Treasure was so badly malnourished that she weighed only 24 pounds and had less than an ounce of water in her belly when she was pronounced dead at a children’s hospital in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023. A healthy child her age should be roughly double that weight.
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Officers with the Atlanta Police Department at about 3:53 p.m. that day responded to McWeay’s home in the 4000 block of Renfrew Court in regard to 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 at the house when authorities arrived, but his two sons were also hospitalized with severe malnutrition and other ailments.
Authorities said the physical evidence showed that McWeay consistently abused and neglected Treasure and her two brothers inside of his home — which prosecutors at trial reportedly referred to as a “house of horrors” — from around May 2021 to December 2023.
After a complaint was filed with social services about the “unsatisfactory conditions” of Rodney McWeay’s home, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, in late June 2023, took custody of the children. But within a week, police said McWeay traveled 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,” police wrote in a probable cause affidavit.
The Georgia Gazette reported that McWeay exercised dictatorial control over his children, keeping all three of them locked in a single room, which they were only permitted to leave with his express permission. McWeay also had no food or children’s clothing in his home when police executed a search warrant on the property. However, they said he did keep several operational surveillance cameras inside and outside the home, with some 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, per Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA. “Until Treasure died.”
McWeay was arrested about two weeks after his daughter’s death, when officers surveilling his house spotted him leaving through the front door and detained him.
At trial, his defense attorney reportedly argued that while the father made “some wrong decisions,” he never intended to hurt his kids and loved them all.
