A Gwinnett magistrate delayed the hearing of a man and his daughter Friday charged with starving a baby to death after the man’s lawyer claimed the Gwinnett Sheriff’s Office was interfering with their ability to prepare for his case.
Attorney Walt Britt said his client Calvin Mcintosh had been put on a suicide watch solely because of the nature of the charge against him — murdering his own child by starvation and starving the child’s mother — which keeps him in isolation and limits his access to pen and paper to help prepare the case.
Deputies won’t take Mcintosh off suicide watch because he won’t answer their questions or medical staff’s questions about his case, Britt said. The lawyer said he instructed Mcintosh only to discuss his case with him.
“I’m not prepared because of the misconduct of the sheriff’s office,” Britt said. “He has continually told the staff that he has no consideration of suicide, he will not harm himself….He’s not suicidal. I’ve been doing this for 34 years and I know people who are suicidal.”
Magistrate Kristina Hammer Blum said she had no authority to countermand the suicide watch but delayed the hearing of Mcintosh and his daughter Najlaa Mcintosh for at least two weeks.
“The charges in this case are incredibly serious so I have no problem giving you more time,” Blum said.
Calvin Mcintosh, 44, and his daughter Najlaa Mcintosh, 23, are accused of starving 15-month-old Alcenti to death and also starving Alcenti’s 21-year-old mother, Iasia Sweeting. Three other children were also severely malnourished and were in need of medical attention, police said.
At the hearing, Gwinnett County investigators are expected to outline their case against the Mcintoshes, who police say used starvation as discipline which resulted in the death of the man’s toddler.
Gwinnett police uncovered the case after Calvin Mcintosh brought the baby to a Sandy Springs hospital last week. Medical staff reported the malnurishment to police who arrested Mcintosh and found Sweeting in the extended stay motel in Peachtree Corners where he and his family were living. That is where police say they discovered Sweeting weighing 59 pounds.
“The infant … was determined to be dead on arrival,” Cpl. Edwin Ritter said in an emailed statement. “Calvin ordered Najlaa to deprive the children and Iasia of food if they are disobedient. The Gwinnett County Medical Examiner ruled starvation as the cause of death for Alcenti.”
Through the investigation, authorities learned Calvin Mcintosh fathered two children with Najlaa Mcintosh and two children with Sweeting. Investigators said they also discovered "copious amounts of literature and notes in reference to ritualistic behavior and the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors," a quasi-religious cult known for claiming the "soverign group" philosophy of not recognizing the authority of the government, Ritter said.
Calvin Mcintosh was arrested on multiple charges, including one count of felony murder, one count of malice murder, four counts of cruelty to children in the first degree, one count of cruelty to children in the second degree, one count of cruelty to a physically disabled adult, one count of rape, one count of incest and one count of aggravated sodomy.
Najlaa Mcintosh was charged with one count of felony murder, one count of malice murder, four counts of cruelty to children in the first degree, one count of cruelty to children in the second degree and one count of cruelty to a physically disabled adult.
Calvin and Najlaa Mcintosh are in the Gwinnett County jail. The three children found in the hotel are in the custody of the Division of Family and Children Services.
Despite initially being described by police as an Islam-based cult, the Nuwaubians are more associated with less main-stream religious beliefs. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups, “Nuwaubianism is best understood as a cult that promotes a bizarre and complicated ‘theology.’ Nuwaubians refer to their belief system – which mixes black supremacist ideas with worship of the Egyptians and their pyramids, a belief in UFOs and various conspiracies related to the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers, as “Nuwaubianism” – not as theology, but as “factology, “Right Knowledge,” or a slew of other names.”
“The group’s founder and leader, Dwight York, took extreme advantage of its adherents, sexually abusing their children and conning the adults out of their possessions. In April 2004, he was sentenced to 135 years in prison for molesting children, among other crimes
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