Jameel Penn says he learned his boys were in trouble when their mother called him via video chat.
Lamora Williams panned around the room, and Penn saw his sons on the floor.
“After I seen what I seen, you know I called the police,” Penn said in an interview Sunday.
But Lamora Williams’ first call wasn’t to Penn.
Longtime friend Neesa Smith told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Williams called her first Friday night.
“I asked her what was wrong and she said, ‘I can’t do it no more,’” Smith said.
The friend said that Williams told her the boys were dead. "I said, 'Call the police Mora. Just call the police,'" Smith said.
Williams was arrested Saturday and charged with murder after her two young children, ages 1 and 2, were found dead inside their southwest Atlanta home.
The two boys had “received burn marks on their bodies at some point,” according to Atlanta police. Investigators hauled an oven away from William’s Oakland City West End apartment.
Williams, 24, told police she left the children with a caregiver at noon Friday and returned home late in the evening, finding the children dead and the caregiver gone. But police say they do not believe Williams left her children with a caregiver. She has been booked into the Fulton County jail.
“I ain’t got no soul no more,” Penn said during a vigil Saturday, as he held onto his 3-year-old, Jameel.
“Ja’karter, Keyante, my world, my everything. I’m lost,” he said.
Friends and family members described Williams as a good-hearted, but overwhelmed woman who meant well.
The 24-year-old single mother of four had help from Penn and her 6-year-old daughter's father's side of the family, but it wasn't enough, they said.
Williams quit a job about a month ago because she couldn’t find a sitter for the kids, according to Smith. “Nobody could tell what she was going through,” she said.
Tabitha Hollingsworth said her sister had struggled with mental health issues her whole life.
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
