VALDOSTA — A court hearing is coming up for a man charged in the death of a 2-month-old child in 2017, according to court documents.

Pretrial motions in the case of Willie Carroll Hamilton, 33, will take place Dec. 10 in a Lowndes County Jail courtroom, according to the superior court’s pretrial calendar.

A Lowndes County grand jury indicted Hamilton for felony murder and cruelty to children in the first degree in its September term.

The Valdosta Police Department said officers responded to an emergency call for an unresponsive male child at 4:44 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16, at an address in the 800 block of Vallotton Drive.

Police officers and firefighters began CPR until emergency medical services took over first aid, a report stated. Paramedics took the child to the South Georgia Medical Center emergency room. The child was then life-flighted to a hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., for further treatment.

The next day, medical personnel in Jacksonville contacted detectives to report the child had died, according to the report.

On Dec. 18, a medical examiner in Jacksonville did an autopsy on the child; a Valdosta police detective was present. The medical examiner discovered internal evidence of trauma to the infant, according to the police department.

The death was ruled a homicide, police said. 

Detectives continued their investigation, identified a suspect and obtained arrest warrants. The suspect was described as the live-in boyfriend of the child’s mother. The suspect was taken into custody without incident and booked into the Lowndes County Jail.

According to court documents, the upcoming hearing will deal with:

• a motion to keep state’s witnesses from testifying that the cause of death was by “homicide;”

• a motion to compel production of a law-enforcement officer’s rough notes;

• a motion to limit the use of photos “to relevant, nonprejudicial and non-duplicative evidence;”

• a motion to order preservation of all evidence; and

• a motion to issue subpoenas for records held by SGMC and Baptist Medical Center/Wolfson’s Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville.

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.