Atlanta

A surprise guilty plea in Gwinnett cult baby starving death

Calvin Mcintosh looks towards a deputy for instructions after being bound over for trial in 2014. 

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Just as a second day of jury selection was getting underway Tuesday, Calvin Mcintosh pleaded guilty to felony murder in the death of his 15-month-old daughter, who authorities said starved to death in a Gwinnett County hotel room in 2014, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Rather than face a trial, Mcintosh will receive a sentence of life in prison, with the chance of parole, plus 30 years of probation. “Life” is 30 years in Georgia, meaning that he can seek parole after serving that time..

Mcintosh pleaded guilty in the death of child, Alcenti, plus three counts of cruelty to children, according to Channel 2 Action News.

“I don’t know how to feel right now,” the baby’s grandmother, Elvis Morgan, said when told of the plea by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Mcintosh had been accused by authorities of murder in the starving death of the girl, who weighed 7 pounds at death, and starving starving three other children and the infant’s mother, Iasia Sweeting for some sort of “misbehavior.”

Sweeting and her family have said she was abducted in 2010 by Mcintosh, a purported member of the so-called cult Nuwaubian Nation of Moors in DeKalb County. But DeKalb police declined to charge Mcintosh and instead classified Sweeting as a runaway.

Return to ajc.com for updates on this developing story.

This story was written by Joshua Sharpe for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.